


The Light You Leave Behind

by laventadorn



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Adventure & Romance, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, M/M, also inspired by the SWCE Ahsoka panel, gotta gear up for my plot, i swear those tags will all become relevant, in Sith Temples, referencing Clone Wars novels, to start at least
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-14
Updated: 2017-03-18
Packaged: 2018-08-08 15:48:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7763773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laventadorn/pseuds/laventadorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ahsoka has left the Jedi Order, and Anakin is haunted by the last words he spoke to her on the steps of the Temple: “I understand, more than you know, wanting to leave the Order.” But perhaps leaving does not mean walking away; perhaps, it means only taking a different path. </p><p>For Obi-Wan, things are even less simple. The darkness clouding the Force seems to whisper behind him; with Anakin gone, he feels half-blind. Does his way lie with the Order that has raised him, or with the two Padawans he has lost?</p><p>Because Anakin and Ahsoka have set out to learn what they can about the Sith - and to destroy them, once and for all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Where Do We Go

“Light is the left hand of darkness  
and darkness the right hand of light.  
Two are one, life and death, lying  
together like lovers,  
like hands joined together,  
like the end and the way.”

- _The Left Hand of Darkness_ , Ursula K. LeGuin

* * *

 

Another storm was brewing, somewhere beyond the city’s tallest spires. Padmé could feel the air thickening and saw, beyond the endless welter of lights, a flicker of lightning. But storms on Coruscant were erratic, and it might be hours away.

Her comlink crackled with Typho’s voice. “ _I have a sighting, my lady. She’s stopped on Level 1228._ ”

“Acknowledged, Captain. Maintain visual contact but don’t approach her.”

Padmé’s stomach dropped as she angled the speeder toward the transport shaft that would take her into the bowels of the city. The air on Coruscant always felt hollow, as if funneling through the endless buildings drained it of all character.

 _Maybe I can take Ahsoka to Naboo_ , she thought, and then wondered if was the stress of war or the dark secret of a clandestine marriage that was driving her a bit mad.

As the walls of the transport tunnel swallowed the skyline, she set the autopilot to maintain the descent. Keeping her hands on the controls, she shifted her attention between the level markers and the downward-drifting speeders and shuttle-buses. Industrial yellow, white, green, and red lights blinked all around her in the dark.

“I’m approaching level 1228, Captain,” she said into her comlink.

“ _Take the south entrance, then proceed to Junction Aurek-4201, my lady_.”

The scent of chlorinated rain, left over from the storms of the past two days, faded as she killed the autopilot and navigated into Tunnel 1228. Now the best smell was synthoil layered over something far too ripe, like grease and decay. The light was sickly, and as her speeder passed smaller byways, unpleasant echoes rippled back to her out of the dark.

The junction directions were harder to make out - worn away by time, ill-lit underground - but she found Aurek-4201 after another ten minutes’ cruising. Her hands cramped where she gripped the controls. Ahsoka could take care of herself, would hardly blink at any dangers posed by lower Coruscant . . . but the fact that she had come down here at all. . .

 _She could have contacted me,_ Padmé thought as she parked the speeder and flipped the switch to activate the security measures Anakin had “upgraded” to deter speeder-jackers. _She chose to come down here instead_. _She chose to leave all her friends without a word_.

“I’m here, Captain,” she said into her comlink.

“ _I’m staying hidden, my lady, but I can see you. Take a left at that ‘spa’_ ” - his tone said he doubted that’s what it really was - “ _and you’ll find her down the first alley on the right_.”

“Thank you, Captain. Wait for contact before you approach us.”

She killed the call and strode across neon-tinted puddles toward the self-proclaimed spa. She hadn’t even changed out of her home dress, merely thrown on a cloak with a blaster in the pocket and sent Typho to pull out all his contacts on the ground to look for Ahsoka. As she’d paced in front of her window, the glittering skyline a haloed distraction on the edge of her sight, the comlink failing to warm in her hand, she’d heard in Anakin’s voice the echo of a grief she remembered all too well from Tatooine.

“ _Tell me what happened, Ani -_ ”

“ _She left, Padmé, she just - left -_ ”

The alley stank of old, stagnant water. A flickering green sign the same color as a lightsaber proclaimed that noodles had once been sold there; but now a rusted grate was pulled across the deserted shop-front. Ahsoka was curled against the grille, her knees pulled to her chest.

Padmé’s echoing footsteps didn’t stir her. Did Ahsoka know who she was? Anakin said the Force could sometimes tell you.

Padmé knelt beside her, the damp ferrocrete soaking her knees through her dress.

“Captain Typho’s up there.” Ahsoka’s voice was muffled by the arms she’d folded across her face. She pointed up at the roof without raising her head. “I could hear him talking to you.”

 _That answers that question,_ Padme thought with a clench of fondness around her heart. Togrutas were predators, she remembered then. Anakin talked frequently about some little thing Ahsoka had done that impressed him, some reflex or sense beyond even a Jedi’s.

The stillness of the alley - the buzzing neon sign, an echoing drip somewhere behind her - made Padmé realize she’d been trying to think of what to say since she’d walked out her own door. She hadn’t worried about finding Ahsoka, about Typho revealing himself. She’d worried . . . about this moment.

She knew there was nothing she could say.

So she leaned forward and put her arms around Ahsoka, resting her chin between Ahsoka’s montrals. Against her arms, Ahsoka stiffened, then trembled.

“I’ve got you, Ahsoka,” Padmé said quietly. “I’m here.”

Ahsoka drew in a shaky breath, then another even less steady. Then her whole body sagged as she fell into Padmé, her fingers gripping Padmé’s dress, her voice hitting Padmé’s heart in a wordless, choked gasp -

“I’m here, sweetheart,” Padmé said, holding her tight as Ahsoka began to sob. “I’m with you.”

* * *

Everything felt . . . blurred, like the things happening around her had already become distant memories. Ahsoka stared at the water coming out of the gold-plated tap in the refresher with only a vague impression of how she’d got there. Padmé’s arms had been around her in the alley . . . then the air was rushing past her ears in the speeder . . . she’d shut her eyes and seen only streaks of garish light against the edge of blackness . . .

She put her hand under the spray, hoping that the hot water would wake her up.

But some time later - like the minutes had just folded around themselves and collapsed - she was drying off, her shape an abstract swatch of colors on the fogged mirror, and she didn’t really remember the shower at all.

A couple of unfamiliar clothing squares lay on the vanity. Had Padmé come into the fresher to leave them? Ahsoka didn’t remember that either. But she dried off and pulled them on, a long tunic and leggings in the softest cloth she’d ever touched. They fit her pretty well, now that she’d almost caught up Padmé in height.

The humid air left over from her shower was making her sticky again. She tapped the door controls and stepped out into the hall.

The bathroom had been warmly lit, but Padmé’s apartment was awash in shadow and faint blue-white lights. Ahsoka wandered toward the sound of Padmé’s voice floating out of the parlor-room door.

“. . . not right now,” she was saying. “I’ll ask her, you know I will, but we need to give her the chance to refuse. You can’t just spring yourself on her, Ani.”

 _Ani_. Ahsoka leaned against the wall outside of the parlor, in the thick shadows where Padmé couldn’t see her. She wasn’t supposed to know that nickname, but Masters and Padawans lived too closely for her not to overhear things. She didn’t think Anakin knew that she knew. He thought he was subtle, and he didn’t like to talk about private things.

If she stayed here, Anakin _would_ spring himself on her. He didn’t listen to anybody, except Master Obi-Wan sometimes. But only sometimes. Padmé might delay him a little bit, but he’d come.

She could leave right now. Steal out while Padmé was on the comm. She’d be no worse off than she’d been when Padmé had found her.

The Force whispered around her, like the murmur of a flowing brook. She closed her eyes and tried to hear what it was telling her. . .

“Ahsoka?”

Padmé was standing in the doorway but not blocking it. The city lights, which never slept, glowed through her long windows, lighting one side of her face and casting the other half into shadow.

“I’ll make you something to drink, if you’re thirsty,” she said. “Or to eat, if you’re hungry?”

“. . . Thirsty,” Ahsoka said. “Thank you.”

Padmé smiled at her, softly, and then disappeared through an adjacent door toward the kitchen, her footsteps as quiet as a cat’s. Ahsoka edged into the parlor, which was full of elegant furniture and empty except for herself.

She stared at the door that would take her out - to the elevator, and down to street level.

Reaching out, she gripped the back of the nearest sofa and lowered herself to sit.

She realized she was shaking again. She rubbed her hands up and down her arms, chafing the soft material of the sleeves against her skin.

Some time probably passed before Padmé returned, a gentle impression in the Force, like fingers brushed through still water.

“Here.” Padmé held out a small black mug. Ahsoka took it: clay, warmed by the drink, with some kind of froth on top that was both sweet and bitter. She tried to concentrate on the warmth, to let it flow through her. But it felt like something solid at her core had turned to ice that nothing could melt.

Padmé tucked herself onto the couch next to her. They were silent while Ahsoka drank, watching the endless speeder traffic loop outside the windows, lights streaming across the wall.

“Did Anakin ask you to find me?”

She stared down into the dregs of her drink, at the clumpy swirls of foam on the thick tea. She couldn’t feel Padmé’s attention on her in the Force the way she’d have been able to feel Anakin’s, because he was her Master.

 _Had been_ her Master . . . or was he still? Did leaving sever it?

Everything felt so far away. Her training told her to ground herself in the present - in the spicy sweetness of the drink lingering on her tongue, the supple weight of her borrowed tunic against her skin - told her to fight that foggy veil around her that made everything seem a bit unreal. But . . . she didn’t _want_ to reach out and see if her bond with Anakin was still there - and she didn’t even know if that was from fear of it being broken or fear of it being whole.

_A Jedi does not fear. A Jedi seeks clarity and balance above all else._

But she wasn’t a Jedi anymore.

“Anakin commed me,” Padmé said. Her words sounded carefully picked. “Eventually he did ask me to look for you - but I’d already made up my mind before he got that far.”

“Was he. . .” Ahsoka didn't know how to finish, what to ask.  _Did he blame me for what I had to do?_

“He was scared,” Padmé said.

Ahsoka stared at her. Anakin. . . ? He was the Hero with No Fear.

“Here.” Padmé held out her hand; after a second, Ahsoka understood, and put her cup in Padmé’s palm. She set it aside on a decorative table and then extended her whole arm toward Ahsoka.

“If you want to,” she said gently.

Ahsoka realized she did. She leaned forward, letting Padmé tuck her against her side. The scent of her favored perfume, made from (she’d told Ahsoka, once) her favorite flower, a water lily from Naboo, folded around her senses.

Padmé rested a gentle hand on her left montral. “Is this all right?”

“Yeah.” It was . . . nice, actually. She’d seen humans stroke each other’s hair, usually to give comfort; Togrutas, as far as she knew, didn’t normally do that, as the montrals were used for sensing. She didn’t use hers; she’d been told they wouldn’t be a lot of use until she was fully grown, but she tended to rely on her Jedi training more than her ingrown Togruta abilities.

But Padmé’s rhythmic, comforting was touch turning her boneless, and she was now almost plastered against Padmé’s side. Her whole body felt like it was humming on some inaudible level.

For the first time since she’d fled the prison days ago, with the shrieking of the klaxon and the roving searchlights breaking the air, she felt . . . safe.

“I heard you talking to Anakin on the comm,” she mumbled.

Padmé’s hand stilled for a moment, then drifted down to rest on her shoulder. “Did you want me to tell him something different?”

“He asked me to stay,” Ahsoka whispered. _Begged_. “I said I couldn’t.”

Padmé’s hand tightened on her shoulder, then released. “No one blames you, Ahsoka. What happened was . . .” She breathed out. “Unconscionable.”

Ahsoka turned her head to look up at Padmé, who smiled sadly down at her. There was something tense and unhappy about that smile, too.

“I try to refrain from criticizing the Jedi Order. I know that to an outsider, a lot of their decisions seem . . .” She sighed, as if this was a conversation she had with herself a lot. “I know I can’t understand them, not really. But what happened to you got so quickly out of control - and I can’t stop thinking that the seeds were planted too long ago - we haven’t been _watching_. . .”

She broke off and closed her eyes, her face full of tense lines. Ahsoka didn’t know what she was talking about, not really, but she twisted her arm up and took Padmé’s free hand, the one still resting on her own shoulder.

“No good at politics, remember?” she joked, or tried to.

Padmé exhaled and dropped her hand on top of Ahsoka’s. “I’m rambling,” she said, her smile now diplomatic, or perhaps self-effacing. Her thumb brushed circles against Ahsoka’s knuckles. “I’m sorry.”

Ahsoka shook her head and closed her eyes. The echoing chasm of the courtroom - the icy, glaring lights - the reverberations of Tarkin’s voice - it was like the memory had been broken into pieces and she could only look at them one at a time. The fear, the hopelessness - she’d felt it before, when the Trandoshans had kidnapped her; but then she’d been _taken_. This time, she’d been . . . cast off. Thrown away.

 _You believed in me_. The Order had given her up and Padmé had reached out. Ahsoka had walked away, and Padmé had found her.

No matter what happened, for the rest of her life, she wasn’t ever going to forget that.

“Will you try to sleep?” Padmé asked. “I have something to help, if you want it.”

“I’ll try sleeping.” She sat up, already missing the warmth against her back.

“I can give you a guest room, or you can stay with me.”

Sometimes Ahsoka wondered if Padmé was Force sensitive, even if it was only a little bit. Or maybe Padmé was just really, really good at people.

Padmé tilted her head, smiling slightly. “Guest room?”

“. . . no, thanks,” Ahsoka said, feeling suddenly shy. In the creche, younglings often doubled up on their mats, sometimes even slept in a pile. She and Anakin had fallen asleep on each other more times than she knew, waking up with an elbow in the back or a foot in the face. But Padmé was like - well, like Master Obi-Wan: intimidating, in a very kind way. She couldn’t imagine daring to fall asleep on Obi-Wan.

Of course, she might never see him again.

And that was why she didn’t want to be alone.

Padmé’s bed was as soft as the clothes she’d lent Ahsoka; the mattress peacefully devoured her as soon as she lay on it. She curled up on one side as Padmé rustled around the room, her nightdress shimmering silver in the dark.

She set a glass of water on the table to Ahsoka’s side of the bed before alighting on the other side of the mattress. Whenever Anakin saw a bed, he flopped on it. They’d challenge each other to see who could make the biggest flop - who could throw themselves down on the bed hard enough to lift the other one straight off the mattress. Using the Force was cheating (but they did it anyway).

Ahsoka closed her eyes and pressed her fist against them, willing the stinging to stop.

* * *

Naboo. The reactor core, the flickering shields. The bottomless well, the biting stench of burnt flesh, of scorched viscera _\--_

No attachments

_To the dark side they lead_

Zigoola. The barren whisper of malice, the scream from the dark. _Die Jedi die Jedi die Jedi die --_

_Fear leads to anger_

_Anger leads to hate_

_Hate leads to suffering_

No emotion _Ahsoka_

No ignorance _clouded is the Force_

No passion _Anakin_

Obi-Wan opened his eyes.

Lightning flickered across the city spires, beyond the transparent balcony door. He felt hollowed out, as if nothing but air was left between his bones and skin.

In the Force, the lashing cloud of Anakin’s emotions receded across the distance. So, he’d finally left the Temple.

A pressure eased off Obi-Wan’s lungs . . . and a sharper feeling set in. 

He unfolded from his meditation mat, his spine popping as he straightened. In his kitchen unit, he poured himself a glass of water. His throat felt like he’d been gargling sand. 

Maybe now that Anakin’s emotions scratched only at the edge of his awareness, no longer as hot and immediate as an imploding star, he could finally find some peace.

_There is no emotion, there is peace._

He drained the last of the water and set the glass in the sink.

“If only that were true,” he said to the silence.

* * *

Sleep had just barely stolen over her when a shrieking crash jerked Padmé awake.

Ahsoka was already tumbling out of bed and hurtling through the door before Padmé had even sat up. She fumbled the blankets off her legs, her hand diving beneath her mattress for her blaster and thumbing off the safety as she ran for the parlor.

Ahsoka stood staring at the wreck of a speeder crumpled on Padmé’s balcony - or possibly at the person who was stumbling out of it.

 _I am going to kill him_ , Padmé thought, even as she was relieved that Ani hadn’t managed to kill _himself._

Captain Typho barreled into the room, blaster drawn, skidding to a stop next to Padmé. When he saw who was slumped against the speeder, he lowered the gun.

“That’s a new one, milady,” he muttered, perhaps so that Ahsoka wouldn’t hear.

When she moved to open the balcony doors, the scent of chlorinated rain blew in; not falling yet, but close.

Anakin looked up, squinting in the glow of the night-traffic. The look on his face when he saw Ahsoka made Padmé’s heart tighten in her chest, as if it had turned into a fist.

Feeling as if she was intruding on something extremely intimate, she turned away from the balcony, to Typho. “As you can see, the danger was only Anakin forgetting how to land his speeder. We’ll be fine, Captain.”

He nodded slowly, holstering the weapon, his good eye drifting from the balcony to her face. “With two Jedi, milady, I hope you will be. I’ll take care of the speeder.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

She turned back toward the window as the apartment door swished shut behind him. Anakin edged into her apartment, the shadows inside falling across his furtive, half-beaten expression as if he’d drawn on a veil.

Padmé struggled with a ragged weave of emotions as Anakin bit his lip. It was split; his hair was sodden and his tunic looked damp, the skin of his throat shining. Not only had he foregone the elaborate construction of Jedi robes, but he wasn’t even wearing shoes.

“Oh, Ani,” she sighed, letting her anger out in a rush of breath. He’d ignored all her carefully reasoned arguments, her impassioned plea to give Ahsoka space - not that either emotion or logic worked on Anakin when he’d made up his mind - but it was so hard to stay angry with him for following his heart when it was so deeply what she loved about him.

Not to mention that he was radiating pain, just the way Ahsoka had in the alley.

“I know you told me not to come.” His voice was hoarse, like he’d been shouting. His eyes darted between her and Ahsoka, uncertain. “I _tried_ to stay at the Temple, but I . . .”

“What’ve you been doing?” Ahsoka asked, peering at him from the balcony doors. “You _stink_.”

Anakin blinked at her, almost owlish, and then smiled; but it was like he’d dragged it halfway onto his face as it fought to slide back off. Padmé amended Ahsoka’s statement: not only did he stink, but he looked _awful_.

“I was drilling,” he said. “Katas, forms . . .”

“Wait.” Ahsoka’s expression shifted. “For how long?”

“Uh. . .” He blinked again. Padmé thought he must be exhausted. The crumpled wreck of his speeder agreed. “Since I commed Padmé? Yeah.”

“The second time?”

“No, she commed me, then.”

“Anakin, you’ve been drilling for -” Padmé checked the wall chrono and felt dizzy. “ _Eleven hours?_ ”

“Yeah.” He scrubbed at his face. “I’m sorry I crashed the speeder on your balcony,” he said, his voice muffled by his fingers.

Padmé looked at Ahsoka, who was staring at Anakin with an expression that shredded at Padmé’s heart.

“I’m getting you a drink of water,” she said, turning on her heel and heading to the kitchen.

 _And letting you two alone to talk_.

Because in that moment - in her own home, between her husband and a girl as dear to her as any member of her blood family - she was an outsider.

She tried not to let it hurt. To think of her own exclusion right now showed the height of self-preoccupation. She didn’t really understand the Master and Padawan bond any more than a Jedi like Obi-Wan or Master Yoda could understand her marriage to Anakin. But perhaps that was the closest comparison - at least, that her experience could give her. In which case . . . between Anakin and Ahsoka, a deep, life-altering bond was on the verge of breaking.

She didn’t want them to be driven apart . . . but she couldn’t blame Ahsoka for leaving.

She bowed her head over the sink for several long moments before inhaling and reaching for the water tap.

* * *

 “Sit down,” Ahsoka said with a sigh. “Before you fall over.”

“I don’t know how the speeder crashed,” he muttered, slumping onto a couch like a droid whose servo mechanisms had been deactivated.

“I do - _eleven hours of saber drilling_.”

His spine was curved in a slump, his face resting in his hands. He made a noise that might’ve been a chuckle, or at least some posing cousin. “You know meditation doesn’t work for me.”

“Nothing in the hangar bay?”

 _What the Sith hells are we talking about?_ she asked herself. Was this conversation supposed to pass for normal?

But she didn’t know another way to _be_ with Anakin.

“Couldn’t concentrate,” he said into his hands.

Couldn’t concentrate on mechanics. Anakin.

“ _He was scared_ ,” Padme had said.

“Master. . .” It just - slipped out. She didn’t even think about it. It was like rubbing her eye when something itched.

Anakin raised his head from his hands. She’d never seen that look on his face before, not even on Mortis or after the Trandoshan kidnapping. It was almost like . . . _he_ didn’t know who he was.

“Ahsoka -” His voice snagged on her name and his breath hitched. “I don’t know what to do.”

She didn’t either . . . but then the Force whispered against her, as if she’d stepped into a stream and the water was carving a gentle path around her . . . and she did know.

She knelt on the sofa next to him and put her arms around his neck, the way Padme had hugged her in the alley. Anakin froze - like she’d done, because Jedi seldom touched like this - and then his arms clamped around her in a crushing grip. Maybe it hurt, or maybe pain felt good.

She rested her chin on his sweaty hair. His human hand fisted in the loose material of her tunic and his breath was hot against her sternum.

“Nobody does,” she whispered. “But I do know one thing.”

“What?” he asked, dragging the word out of his throat.

“You _really_ stink.”

Anakin laughed like he might have cried. “Eleven hours of saber practice, Snips.”

“Congratulations, Skyguy.” She petted his damp hair, like Padme had done for her. “Now celebrate with a shower.”

He inhaled, maybe gathering himself, and nodded, his grip loosening but not sliding away just yet. “Good idea.”

“I’m full of ‘em.” She looked up at a gentle touch in the Force and saw Padme standing in the doorway, holding a glass of water. The light shining from behind her cast her face into shadow, blotting out her expression.

“Can you smell him down the hall yet?” she asked Padme.

Anakin laughed again, a short, surprised sound, less wrung-out than the earlier one, and finally disentangled himself. “I’m going, all right?”

He collected the glass of water from Padme as he passed her, his posture sheepish. She placed a hand on his shoulder, then let it slide away.

“I’ll take the guest room this time,” Ahsoka said. She detected something stunned in Padme’s silence and hurried, cringing, to say, “I mean, I don’t want to keep you up - it might take me a long time to fall back asleep. I think I need to . . . meditate.”

Even though she was as lousy at that as Anakin was. Plenty of times she’d suspected that Master Yoda had assigned her to Anakin - despite that just not being the way it was done - because any other Master would’ve shipped her straight back to the Temple with the note, “ _I can’t work with this_.”

Not that it mattered anymore.

Padme’s gown shimmered as she moved on silent feet across the soft carpet. She brushed a light kiss across Ahsoka’s forehead, building a lump in her throat.

“If you need me, please don’t hesitate to come and get me,” Padme said quietly.

Then she disappeared back down the hall to her bedroom.

Ahsoka wandered to the guest room. A thread of light limned the refresher door across the hall; she could hear water running. At least if he couldn’t follow orders to stay put at the Temple, Anakin could see the wisdom of not smelling like a ten-year-old training mat.

Her fond smile faded as she palmed the controls to shut her door. She sighed as she climbed onto the bed and folded her legs underneath her, rubbing her palms across her knees.

She hadn’t lied; she really did want to try meditation. If only because the majority of the time she attempted it, she fell asleep.

Part of the problem she seemed to have was her enhanced Togruta senses. She knew the point of meditation was to learn to shut out the physical world, but whenever she was quiet and trying, everything seemed louder. Now, even without help from her montrals, she could hear thunder crackling over the rush of speeders outside, Anakin shutting the water off through two closed doors. . .

And then there was his Force presence. Honestly, if she could’ve learned to meditate by following Anakin around the Force, she’d probably impress even Master Obi-Wan with her quick focus by now. Anakin’s emotions were so strong that it took only the lightest of contact to feel the full spectrum. Unless she was actively shielding, she could pick him up without even concentrating. In fact, she had to keep tight control of her senses even when reaching out, because otherwise they’d crash together.

She’d learned in the creche how to guard her senses, so keeping them pulled in was second nature; focusing them outward was the trick. She centered her breathing and opened up, light like Padme’s kiss against her forehead, reaching toward Anakin -

The storm of his emotions hit her like a wildfire and a thunderstorm together, loud, crackling - and destructive. She reeled, snatching her senses back, probably leaving an impression on him like a sudden shriek.

 _Sith hells, Skyguy_ , she thought, rubbing at her breastbone. Her skin felt like it’d taken an electric shock. She closed her eyes and tried to center her breathing again - but this time, she’d keep her senses to herself.

Then something brushed against her awareness, an almost shy nudge.

Sighing, she thought, _I wasn’t cut out for mediation anyway_ , and unfolded her legs.

When she opened the door, Anakin stood on the other side, looking damp and sheepish and smelling like Padme’s amber-scented soap. As with Ahsoka, Padme had provided him with a change of clothes. No guesses why she’d had them.

“Sorry,” he said, shuffling his bare feet. “I felt you just before you . . . sorry.”

In the beginning - before he’d stopped being so standoffish; before they’d really become a team - he’d treated her checking up on him like a violation. For all his stormy tumult of emotions, bright as a solar flare to anyone who knew how to look, Anakin was an intensely private person. And _now_ he was apologizing for making her pull away.

The irony burned, like skin left bare to the freezing cold.

“I was trying to meditate,” she said, shrugging one shoulder.

“Went that well, huh,” he said, with hollowed-out humor.

“Better than ever.” She tilted her head to the side. “You can come in. I’m not sleepy.”

She folded herself into a sitting position against the head-pad, while Anakin curled up on the other end of the bed. His fingers plucked at the threaded weaving on the blanket, while his toes scrunched up and released.

“I tried wearing myself out so I’d stop thinking,” he said, watching himself pull a thread loose, unraveling part of the strand.

“Went that well, huh,” she said.

Half his mouth moved in a smile, the other half staying put. “Well as you saw.”

“You’re lucky Rex didn’t see you crash or you’d never live it down.”

“You’d have to tell him,” he said - the words easy enough, but his shoulders hunching like he meant something else.

And there it was. If he said the words _come back_ , _don’t leave_ , she’d either kick him out or cry.

Or she could handle this herself, the way she’d told him she needed to do. She'd handled worse on her own, without him.

Maybe. It depended on how you classified betrayal.

“I’ll probably never see him again,” she said.

Anakin sent her a broken, uncertain look from the corner of his eye. He bit his lip - he’d split it somehow, during his _eleven hour_ drilling session. (And where had Master Obi-Wan been during that time?)

“I’m not coming back, Anakin,” she said. “Being here . . . doesn’t change that.”

“. . . I know.” But from the way he slumped, she wasn’t sure.

“Why’d you come here?” she asked, keeping her voice gentle.

“Because I couldn’t be anywhere else.”

She felt the black, crackling storm roiling around him quiet for a moment, as if the truth of saying that calmed him, even if it was only for a moment. Then the clouds closed over him with a rumble, and he dropped his head into his hands again.

Ahsoka scooted down the bed and stroked her fingers through his hair, learning again from Padme. In the Force, she felt him brush against her senses, like a cooling breeze, but he didn’t lift his head. It might’ve been easy to resent him, to say he was making her leaving all about himself . . . but the truth was, she was glad he was there. The truth was, the damp, feathery feeling of his drying hair slipping through her fingers sent ripples of contentment back to her, like sunlight dancing on a churning brook.

They stayed like that, gently linked in the Force, by her touch, as the rain finally started to fall outside Padme’s window.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> since this chapter is full of emotions, i'll refrain from leaving a long, goofy note, here. but this fic was inspired by the way the end of CW season 5 crushed my heart in a way that's never healed. naturally, as some kind of plot was thereafter necessary, Action shall eventually brew.
> 
> i nabbed this fic's title from lyrics in an FM-84 song, "Wild Ones." the song has nothing to do with the fic, i just loved the line.
> 
> next time: ahsoka and anakin might not know what to do with themselves, but padme might have an idea... and breakfast.


	2. Uncertain Ground

Anakin was aware of the soft patter of rain on the edge of his hearing, of warmth surrounding him, before the tickling touch on his hair pulled him fully awake.

He squinted his eyes open. Padmé stood over him brushing her fingers through his fringe, the way she knew to wake him so that he wouldn’t startle. She smiled down at him, looking more like an angel than ever. He, on the other hand, felt like something partially digested and spat out of a sarlacc pit.

“It’s hard to imagine you and Obi-Wan waking up like this,” she murmured, still stroking his hair.

Anakin looked down. Ahsoka’s leg was thrown over his hip, and her head was resting on his good arm. She was still asleep, but he could feel her consciousness stirring.

“Obi-Wan’s not a touchy-feely kind of guy,” Anakin muttered, slumping back into the mattress.

He didn’t have the energy to get himself up yet. That was . . . unusual. He always had the energy to get up, even when he was lying in a ship rigged with explosives and a massive sheet of metal was pinning him down.

Last night he’d worked himself in the training salle until just breathing had taken all the strength he’d had left. But this feeling of being stripped down to his core without mercy wasn’t . . . physical. At least not entirely.

Padmé perched on the edge of the bed, lacing her fingers through his mechanized hand. He returned her grip - lightly, careful of the crushing pressure he’d rigged the hand to inflict if necessary - and for that moment tried to enjoy the peace of having both Ahsoka and Padmé where he knew they were safe, with him.

Ahsoka made a sleepy noise, stretching, and kicked his thigh.

“Hnuh?” she slurred, raising her head. She squinted first at him, then at Padmé , and for that moment things were almost as they once had been.

But he knew the second when she remembered. In the Force, her warm, sleepy presence plummeted like a barometer registering an oncoming storm, and she dropped her head back against his arm. Then she made a face.

“Your arm’s not the best pillow,” she said, but she didn’t move.

“You’re the one who’s lying on it,” he said, not minding one bit.

“Come have some breakfast, you two,” Padmé  said. She patted the metal of Anakin’s arm, the sensors tapping him with a dim echo of warmth, and rose from the bed. Her dress, a pale, creamy color, rippled around her like it was caught in a breeze as she left the room.

He and Ahsoka lurched out of bed like two banthas with arthritis. He felt like every one of his bones, even the tiny ones in his fingers, was ready to get him back for those eleven hours he’d spent in katas. Ahsoka kept scrubbing at her eyes and giving the overhead lights dirty looks.

“I feel like Padmé scraped me out of a puddle before taking me back here,” she said. She squinted at herself in the mirror and poked at her reflection’s cheek on the glass.

Anakin splashed water on his face. It stung his lip, which he didn't remember breaking. 

“What’s that on your cheek?” Ahsoka asked.

“Huh?” He followed her example of squinting at himself. It was a pretty unrewarding picture.

“It’s a _bruise_ ,” Ahsoka said, a bit accusing.

“I probably got it when I crashed the speeder.” Or he might’ve hit himself in the face with his lightsaber hilt at some point. He couldn’t really remember. All his memories of the past few - kriffing hell, the past few _days_  - felt like he was trying to look at them through rainy glass.

“I leave for five hours and you turn into a complete wreck.” She said it like it was a joke, and it kind of was - _he_ was the joke, because it was true.

But he felt a light pressure, on some level far beyond physical, like a blanket made of that same rippling material as Padmé’s dress. He met Ahsoka’s eyes in the mirror, her sad, hesitant smile.

“Yeah,” he said. “Sounds about right.” He tilted his head toward the door. “Come on. Breakfast’ll get cold.”

He didn’t think Padmé could serve a lousy meal any more than she could feel comfortable wearing a bag. Even at home, Padmé always looked ready to attend somebody’s coronation, and she laid the table like she was prepared to host the after-coronation dinner. Eleven hours of drilling had left a black hole where his stomach should be, but he doubted he could help Padmé and Ahsoka make a dent in everything she’d laid out: fruits, grains, jams, cakes, fish, sea-greens, several different types of juice, and a pot of thick tea. His apprenticeship with Obi-Wan had exposed him to some impressive banquets on loads of planets, but no one in the galaxy could match Padmé when she was feeling hospitable.

Ahsoka pointed at some see-through doughy rolls sitting on a curved plate. “Is this from Naboo?”

“It’s my mother’s recipe,” said Padmé. She was dispensing the thick tea like pouring it was a royal duty she’d taken deeply seriously as queen, all grace and beauty. He’d swear she held her elbow out at the same angle, put her fingertips in the same spot on the lid, every time. “Try one. You’ll love them.”

Anakin waited till Ahsoka’s fingers were almost touching one of the rolls before he Force-nabbed it away from her.

“Hey!” she said.

“Gotta shtay fharp, Shnipsh,” he said, his mouth already full.

Narrowing her eyes at him, Ahsoka grabbed two of the buns and stuffed them defiantly between her teeth.

Padmé’s mouth flattened in a way that showed she was trying not to laugh at them. She pushed a cup of tea at Anakin and shook her head when he swigged it to wash down the last of the roll.

“You eat like a nerf, Skyguy,” Ahsoka said.

“ _You’d_ know,” Anakin said, repressing a burp.

“At least she waited till her mouth wasn’t full to talk,” Padmé said dryly. “How does Obi-Wan stand being at the same table as you two?”

Anakin snorted - a picture of Obi-Wan’s pained grimace was all too easy to conjure, and he knew Ahsoka was thinking the same - but then the thought _He won’t be eating at the same table as the two of us ever again, will he_ drained all the humor away. His gaze met Ahsoka’s, and at the same time dropped away. He felt suddenly as cold as he was ravenous.

“I’m sorry.” Padmé's voice was very gentle. “That was insensitive of me.”

“It isn’t your fault,” Ahsoka said, picking at the piece of fish she’d put on her plate.

Anakin ground his spoon into a honey berry, mashing it into a paste.

“Ani.” Padmé put her hand over his, stopping the spoon.

He hunched his shoulders and tried not to bend the spoon in half. “I don’t know what to do.”

Padmé didn’t say anything. Her hand on his forearm didn’t move. Ahsoka was still and silent next to him. She brushed against him in the Force, like water against the shore, but drew away again before he could reach out. He wondered if she was afraid of feeling something from him again, or if she’d lost control.

Padmé sighed. “Let me . . . sketch something for you two. May I?”

“You can’t draw,” Anakin said, confused.

“Not like that.” Padmé squeezed his arm - the sensors triggered warmth along his nerves - and then pulled her hand back, curling her fingers around her teacup. “I mean of the situation - in the Senate, the eyes of the Republic.”

He darted a look at Ahsoka, who looked as nonplused as he felt.

“Okay,” she said. “Sure.”

“This is politics, now - not your favorite subject, either of you.” Padmé smiled at them, a little wry, and he felt the warmth of her fondness in the Force, a hundred times stronger than the sensors in his mechanized arm. Then her smile faded. “And you’re definitely not going to like this aspect of it,” she said quietly.

“Go ahead,” he said. The berry paste on his plate was mocking him, so he started scraping it up and licking it off the spoon.

“I’ll get right to the point, then. The Jedi’s public image is badly deteriorating.”

He stopped with the spoon pressed between his teeth. Padmé’s eyes were infinitely kind but . . . grim. “The war is doing that damage, the more it drags on. The people began the war believing the Jedi would solve it as soon as possible - in their minds, before it impacted any part of their lives - but as _years_ have gone by and the conflict shows no resolution - ”

He felt a scorching flare of hurt. “That isn’t our fault - ”

“Anakin.” The kindness, the compassion, in her eyes was almost too much. It _was_ too much - he had to look away. “Do you think I don’t know? We’re sitting here, all three of us together, _because_ I know.” She let out a breath, more than a sigh; as if it had traveled a long way from some depth in her heart. “Which brings me to my other point. . . the fallout from Ahsoka’s trial is going to be devastating to the Jedi’s public image.”

Ahsoka’s emotions pricked him through the Force, like he’d fallen into a bramble-bush. He tensed up in response.

“Had the Jedi refused to give Ahsoka up to the military tribunal,” Padmé said, her voice as flat as the blue-glass surface of her table, “the public would have seen that decision as standing in defiance of the Republic the Jedi have sworn to serve. However, allowing Ahsoka to be tried by an outside institution has made the Order seem divided, even . . . broken.”

“You’re saying there was nothing they could have done that would’ve been the right decision,” Ahsoka muttered, staring down at the table.

Padmé, he knew, wanted to get up and hug her; but there was something stern holding her back. This was Padmé the Senator, the former Queen, who knew that compassion had its place, but so did cold, harsh truths.

“Precisely,” she said. “There was no good option - in the eyes of the Republic.” (Anakin knew what she thought the Jedi should have done, because she and he thought the same way.)

“What do you mean, the fallout from her trial?” he asked.

“The Jedi Order was attacked from within,” said Padmé. “Barriss -” (He felt Ahsoka’s flinch at the name, but she was holding herself so still.) “- confessed. With Ahsoka pleading innocence, there would at least have been speculation of motive, but Barriss stated openly that her actions were meant as repudiation of the Order itself. That alone would be damaging, without . . . ” She sighed again. “Without the Order already showing cracks.”

“What are you saying?” Anakin asked. The Force was whispering at him, stirring, jangling.

“Ahsoka is only a Padawan,” Padmé said. Her voice was steady, her eyes - Obi-Wan looked like that, sometimes, when he was about to say something Anakin wasn’t going to like. “Her leaving the Order will be . . . less remarkable than her trial. The damage was done, for the Republic, the minute the Council made their decision. But if you leave the Order, Anakin - it will cripple the Jedi.”

There was some pressure on his throat, making it hard to breathe. Ahsoka raised her head to stare at him. “I never said. . .” he whispered.

“No. You didn’t have to.” She leaned forward, that terrifying look in her eye sharpening. “But it could be what we need.”

Ahsoka was staring at Padmé, now. He saw her on the edge of his vision; his gaze was glued to Padmé, as if she’d reached into the Force and held him like iron. “What?”

“The war is not drawing to a close. We all know there’s no end in sight.” She held his gaze, something fierce and sharp he seldom saw; something that echoed from the pits of Geonosis, from the marshlands of Naboo. “If we want to end the war, we need to change the game.”

“I don’t understand how Anakin leaving the Order would do that,” Ahsoka said, sounding honestly bewildered. She had it more together than he did, though; he couldn’t even line his thoughts up straight.

“Politically? It might be possible to turn the loss of faith in the Jedi to our advantage - but only if the faith is _broken_. Just shaken, as it is now, won’t do enough. The Jedi are still all that stands between the Republic and the war. As long as they _can_ rely on you, they will. They might condemn, but they haven’t the will or the recourse to do anything else.”

“You want to _scare_ them,” Anakin realized. “You want them to think . . . there’s nothing between them and the war anymore.”

“Yes,” Padmé said, cool, collected, but not . . . not calm. This was Padmé with all her gentle layers pulled back, revealing the core that was always ready to fight. Maybe not with him or Ahsoka, but with the entire Republic, and probably with the Separatists too. “I want them to stop driving the Republic into bankruptcy. I want them to stop ordering more clones, as if those men are worth less than the credits that buy them. I want to bring the Jedi home.” Because even at her most ferocious, Padmé was compassionate to the depths of her heart.

“It’s always seemed like the Separatists were a hop, skip and a jump ahead of us,” Ahsoka said. “It’s seemed . . . like we were being played, so many times.”

He knew. Their first mission together - taking Rotta, Jabba’s son, back to Tatooine, when they’d lost all those clones, and he’d asked her, _If we fight to protect the kidnappers, the smugglers, the murderers, what are we fighting for_ \- it still stalked him like a shadow at dusk. Dooku had played them. Dooku was always playing them.

“Barriss played us,” he said, half a whisper. “That whole trial . . . what if that was a play, too?”

“What d’you mean?” Ahsoka asked, but her eyes were narrowed, and he knew she was already working it out on her own.

“I don’t - ” He pressed the heel of his mechanized hand against his forehead. “If the people hate the Jedi now . . . if the _Jedi_ hate the Jedi . . . ”

“The nanodroids,” Ahsoka said. A shiver passed over her, not dread but instinct, like a predator’s senses sharpening. “We never asked how Barriss got them. . .”

In the Force, their senses linked. He felt his own horror looping with hers - with anger, with hurt, with fear. . . because if the Jedi were being attacked from the inside and out. . .

“We need a new strategy,” Padmé said calmly. “This is mine. What do you think?”

Anakin blinked, remembering she was there.

Leave the Order. . .

“ _I understand, more than you know, wanting to walk away from the Jedi Order_ ,” he’d said to Ahsoka yesterday (stars’ end, was it only yesterday). But he’d always stopped before taking that last step . . . before leaving Obi-Wan alone, leaving the war to consume the galaxy, leaving Rex and his men to die, leaving the prophecy to rot . . . leaving everything he knew, everything he’d been, everything they’d meant him to be, except for Padmé.

“I know that even proposing this is cruel,” she said. Her compassion overtook the grim, fighting edge that gleamed through the Force, but didn’t push it away. She knew what she was asking. She didn’t really understand - she couldn’t - but as much as she could imagine, she knew. “I know it’s a terrible thing to put before you, Ani.”

She didn’t say, _I’m sorry_ , or, _I’m only doing what I think is right_. That was good. She’d laid out her plan like Obi-Wan would have told the clones the odds on the next engagement. You didn’t say you were sorry when you were asking people to lay it all on the line. It would be insulting as hell.

Thinking of the clones calmed him. This was a war. The clones put it all on the line every day. Bred and raised to do one thing, they fought. So many of them died. So many of their brothers died. They kept doing it anyway.

But in a way, dying was easy. Living was the harder part.

“What’s the likelihood of it working?” he asked.

“I’d have a stronger idea after talking with Bail. I won’t without your permission.”

“Do it.”

The words escaped him almost without him thinking about it. It was like opening his fingers and watching a hydrospanner fall to the floor.

“Mast - ” Ahsoka broke off, like she’d finally decided to stop calling him that, but didn’t know what else to call him.

“Talk to Bail,” Anakin said. “In the meantime. . .” He curled and uncurled his metal fingers, feeling the servos click. “Ahsoka and I will figure out what we’d do to change the game.”

Now it was his turn to get stared at.

“Uh. . .” Ahsoka said. “We will?”

“Well.” He smiled. It didn’t feel like a smile. “I might walk away from the Order, but I can’t walk away from the war. And we’re a team, Snips. So I think we should go after Dooku and stop the war at the top.”

* * *

“ _What_?” Ahsoka yelped. She hadn’t meant to yelp, but that’s how it came out. She tried again. “Go after _Dooku_? How hard did you hit your head last night?”

“He’s controlling everything,” Anakin said. In the Force, she felt a darkened thrill travel through their bond, the exact feeling she got before he did something totally crazy-dangerous. Oh, great. “He’s the Sith in charge, the one driving the Separatist forces - Grievous is just a grunt, there’s no way the war would hold onto its purpose and organization if Dooku bit it. You know I’m right, Snips.”

“Don’t tell me I know you’re right, you know I hate that,” Ahsoka said, but she turned the thought over in her mind. He was right - it didn’t take many turns at all to see that. The Trade Federation, the Techno Union, even the Confederacy of Independent Systems, operated on Dooku’s say-so. They wouldn’t shrivel up and blow away on the wind if he was taken out of the picture, but tMaster Obi-Wan had said for a long time that Dooku was the architect of all the war’s cruelest and most cunning plans. . .

So, taking out Dooku wasn’t that crazy. But the rest of it. . .

“How are you and I supposed to do it? And don’t say ‘we’ll figure that out when we need to,’” she added. For the first time, she saw something good in this leaving-the-Jedi-Order thing - since she wasn’t a Padawan anymore, she could tell Anakin when he needed to get his head checked.

“We’ll figure _something_ out, obviously,” he said, that dark yet blazing thread between them as strong as ever. “That’s what we’ll start with.”

Then he glanced to the side, and for the first time she felt a ripple of hesitancy from him. He must’ve got some feedback from Padmé that had escaped Ahsoka.

“Padmé?” he said, almost tentative. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.” She seemed to shake herself loose from some invisible tension that had fallen over her like a mynock web. Wryly, she said, “I suppose I should’ve expected you to come out with a plan even more shocking than mine.” Dropping her balled-up napkin onto the table, she said, “I’ll leave you two to your discussions and move on to mine.”

“D’you need help?” Anakin asked as she pushed back her chair. Ahsoka wondered what he was talking about, but Padmé only shook her head.

“Dorme is on her way. You two eat.” She pointed at their empty plates. “I set all this up and then lobbed a conversational bomb at you. Go on.”

She smiled and left them, the sleeves of her dress fanning out behind her. Ahsoka wondered how soft the material was. It seemed as light as wind.

The breakfast was still warm, kept in stasis by the plates and platters. Being rich was something else. As a Jedi she never (had never) wanted for anything necessary, but the Jedi didn’t really believe in luxuries like these. And Temple food, while not unappetizing, had never looked like this.

Anakin dumped fish, another of the translucent rolls, a wheat cake, a pile of gooey amber honey berries, and some kind of red jam onto his plate and started scarfing it down indiscriminately. He really did eat like a nerf. It was honestly kind of a wonder Padmé could bear to sit on the other side of the table. She hadn’t cringed _once_. (Maybe because he hadn’t eaten a lot while she was still in the room.)

“Trydif,” Anakin said, pushing the red jam over.

Ahsoka lumped it on one of the crumbly wheat cakes and groaned the second it hit her tongue. “What _is_ that?” she said - with her mouth full, but at least Padmé was in the other room.

“Padmé’f mom makef it,” Anakin said in between gobbles.

Ahsoka finished off her first cake in an undignified amount of time and started on another. Anakin was actually licking his plate when the front door swished open and an elegant dark-haired woman walked in with Captain Typho. Ahsoka guessed she was Dorme. Dark-haired, she could pass for Padmé in low lighting, or to those who didn’t know what to look for. Ahsoka supposed her clothes were fashionable; she didn’t really know much about that kind of stuff. Her cloak was thrown back to allow her to carry an armload of shopping bags unimpeded.

“Master Skywalker,” said it-had-to-be-Dorme. Her eyelids flickered as she took in Ahsoka. She probably wasn’t used to seeing Anakin just sitting around barefoot and messy-haired with anyone but Padmé.

“Morning. Padmé went to get ready,” he said, nabbing a handful of blue grapes.

With a dignified nod, Dorme followed Padmé’s earlier path out of the room.

“I have a replacement speeder for you when you’re ready, Master Skywalker,” said Captain Typho mildly.

“Thanks,” Anakin said. His tone was curt, which meant he was embarrassed.

Ahsoka used his distraction to Force-nab three of the grapes out of his hand.

“Now the master, the student has become,” she said in her best Yoda-voice when he squawked.

In retaliation, he used the Force to steal her whole plate. “Much to learn, you still have.”

She swiped the jam jar and the wheat cakes and dragged them over to her side of the table. “Know more than you think, I do.” 

“Is this how Jedi have breakfast?” Captain Typho asked, observing them with his one good eye.

“Just us,” said Anakin, with a smile that was almost invisible; but he was looking at Ahsoka, who felt her heart clench lightly, as if under a gentle pressure.

“That’s a relief,” said Typho, either unaware of the undercurrent or pretending not to notice it. “I don’t know how you’d get anything done otherwise.”

Anakin’s comlink buzzed.

Ahsoka tensed up just as he did, their bond suddenly lit like a live wire.

“Stang it,” he muttered, slapping his hand down on the comm, “that’s gonna be Obi-Wan. I’ll. . .” His gaze darted around (Typho had slid out of the room already, barely noticed) as he stood, his hand clutched around the comlink.

“I’ll be here,” Ahsoka said, and watched him go.

* * *

Anakin went into the guest room he’d passed out in with Ahsoka last night - or early this morning - glad that it was a pretty bland room, all things considered. At least there were no glaring signs of where he was.

Obi-Wan’s image, about half again as long as his hand, materialized above the holocom link when he activated it.

“ _Well, you’re all in one piece, at least,_ ” Obi-Wan said. “ _I was beginning to wonder_.”

Obi-Wan could be snide as hell, especially if Anakin was late or incommunicado, but right now he only looked tired. Holocoms weren’t the best method for reading the minutiae of someone’s expression - only blue, and they flickered - but Obi-Wan looked just that tired.

“You look like I felt when I woke up,” Anakin said, “like something spat out of a sarlacc pit.”

“ _Charming_ ,” said Obi-Wan. “ _But not inaccurate. May I ask where you are?_ ”

There was that snide edge, but it was tempered by exhaustion. _You can ask_ , Anakin thought, but he wasn’t actually in the mood to wind Obi-Wan up. His stomach tightened and he tried to release the sudden wave of nausea that certainly wasn’t from the breakfast.

“I’m at Padmé’s. She found Ahsoka,” he said into the gaping silence, trying not to cringe. “Ahsoka’s here. We were having breakfast.”

 _“I see_ ,” Obi-Wan said, his tone even more unreadable than his expression in the flickering blue image. “ _How is she?_ ”

“She’s Ahsoka,” Anakin said, heart stinging. “She’s as tough as they make ‘em.”

“ _Yes_.” Obi-Wan rubbed his hand down his face, then sighed. “ _I - the Council needs you back here. They’ve a mission for us. We’ve a briefing at 1100 hours_.”

It was barely past 0800. Obi-Wan must have thought it would take some work to get Anakin back in time. Well, sometimes it did.

“That’s fast,” Anakin said, not meaning the heads-up. _They want to get me off-planet to distract me from what they did to Ahsoka._

“ _There’s no rest in this conflict_ ,” Obi-Wan said. “ _Now less than ever. I’ll be expecting you as soon as you can get here.”_

He moved to cut the call without any further ado, but before Anakin’s indignation could flare high, Obi-Wan stopped, something peculiar moving over his face, and it wasn’t the constant flicker of the stream.

“ _Tell Ahsoka_. . .” He sighed, and Anakin’s annoyance vanished in a sudden rush of affection. “ _Tell her she’s in my thoughts._ ”

Then his image vanished with a soft fritz.

 _For you, that was practically a vow of undying affection,_ Anakin thought. Ahsoka would get it. Hell, he’d often thought she could read Obi-Wan better than he could. He’d never quite traveled steady on that Jedi wavelength that everyone else in the Temple could ride like breathing.

And it was back to the Temple with him. For now. For the last time?

His throat felt suddenly thick, like it had swollen.

Sitting here stewing about it was no good. If he was going to go, he might as well get going. He got up and palmed the door open, and almost ran smack into Padmé.

“I’m off, now - Ani?”

She was wearing a dark red gown whose trailing sleeves exposed tight cuffs down to her wrists, and her curly dark hair was bound up under a net of pearls. The overall effect was throat-cutting elegance. He felt dizzy, for a moment, with tenderness and desire and - gratitude.

“Ani - oof!” She clearly hadn’t expected him to grab her up in a hug. He hadn’t either, to be honest.

“Thank you,” he said hoarsely against her hair.

Her hand rested along his ribcage. “For what?”

 _For saving Ahsoka. For loving me. For being Padmé._ “Just . . . everything.”

She pulled at his grip and he loosened his arms, regret already churning in him at having to let go. But she only put her hands on his face and pulled his forehead down to rest against hers. She was so short that it was going to put a crick in his neck, but he didn’t care. If he had to pick three scents in the whole galaxy that made him think of home, one of them would be Padmé’s: that prickly perfume of hers, mixed with the scent of her amber soap.

“I’m headed back to the Temple,” he muttered. “Obi-Wan called. They’re going to try to send us on a mission. I might have to tell him. . .”

He lost the words. Would he be able to go through with it, to tell Obi-Wan he was . . . if he couldn’t say it to Padmé?

If he couldn't say it to himself?

Her fingers brushed through the curls along his nape. “I understand. Anakin. . .” She kissed him, a light, gentle thing, and he was too churned up inside to reciprocate before it was over. “You have to do what you think is right. That’s all any of us can do - and no one can tell us, when it comes down to the final moment, what that is.”

She smoothed her hands across his shoulders, tugging his shirt into place, and smiled up at him. It was a sad, wise expression, and for a moment he thought he’d die if she let go of him.

“Whatever you decide,” she said, placing her hand on his cheek; his eyes dropped shut and he leaned into her touch. “I love you.”

He nodded, because he couldn’t seem to speak. He put his hand over hers and just - held on.

“I’ll contact you when I’ve spoken to Bail,” she said, “though I haven’t any way of knowing when that will be.”

Then she threaded their fingers together and kissed his hand. He felt safe and branded and terrified by the lingering warmth.

“Please don’t plan a takeover of the galaxy without consulting me first,” she said, her hand brushing his cheek.

“Yeah,” he said at last, his voice rough, like he’d scratched it.

He followed her into the parlor, where Ahsoka was eating a peach. She gave Padmé a sheepish look, probably because she’d made a mess of herself - Anakin knew from experience that those Naboo peaches got juice everywhere if you didn’t slice them up first - but before she could get to her napkin Padmé bent down and kissed her cheek, too.

“I’ve already extracted a promise from Anakin not to stage a galactic coup while I’m gone. Do I have your word, too?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Ahsoka, saluting.

Padmé squeezed her shoulder with a smile and touched her fingers to her lips as she glanced back at Anakin.

The sight of her walking away always tore at his heart.

“You’re so obvious, Skyguy,” said Ahsoka, smiling faintly as the door swished shut.

He was allowed to be obvious now - with her, at least. And if he left the Order. . .

He slumped into his chair at the table. “There’s no reason to hide it from _you._ Not anymore.”

Ahsoka bit into her peach, making a not-really-grumpy face when the juice ran over her fingers. “I knew already.”

His heartbeat jerked. “What? _How_?”

“You’re as obvious as the day is long, that’s how. I think it’s sweet,” she added, with a look that was probably supposed to be encouraging or something.

He groaned, propping his head on his good hand, and sighed. “You and I are terrible Jedi, sometimes, Snips.”

She looked down at the half of the peach she still held. Quietly, she said, “I’m not a Jedi anymore.”

“. . . Maybe not.” _I might not be soon either_. “Maybe you’ll always be a Jedi. I don’t know. That philosophy stuff is never gonna be my forte. But we were never typical, were we?”

He hadn’t wanted her as his Padawan. He hadn’t wanted a Padawan at all, but it wasn’t like she’d won him over the second she’d appeared. And now, the thought of staying in the Order without her was as terrifying as a life without Padmé in it.

But Obi-Wan . . . he’d never leave the Jedi. If Anakin left, he’d leave Obi-Wan behind. If he stayed, he’d have to let Ahsoka go.

He didn’t know what to do. He knew what he wanted - everyone he loved, safe, where he could protect them - but he didn’t know how to make it happen. He’d failed before and lost his mother.

And that fear, which had lived banked in his heart for as long as he could remember, which had flared up and consumed him when his mother’s heartbeat fell silent, and which had burned through him, low but insistent, ever since then . . . it whispered to him again, a searing murmur, that perhaps he could never make it happen. That the darkness clouding everything, consuming the galaxy in a war, slaughtering the clones, breaking the Jedi, was ripping his family apart no matter how hard he fought.

They had to do something. _He_ had to do something. He was the best. He’d _trained_ to be the best.

And if the fear whispered that being the best might not be good enough, then he’d burn himself to ash trying.

“I’m going to the Temple,” he said to Ahsoka. Calm didn’t settle over him, but he put his back to the fear, as if bracing against a roaring wind. “Obi-Wan’s - I have to talk to him. It’s nothing permanent,” he said quickly, when Ahsoka only looked at him thoughtfully.

She nodded. “I’ll see you later, Skyguy.”

He stopped with his hand on the back of his chair, remembering Obi-Wan’s parting words. “Obi-Wan says you’re in his thoughts.”

Ahsoka’s emotions rippled like a shower of rain passing across the still surface of a pond.

“Tell him he’s in mine, too.”

* * *

With Anakin and Padmé gone, that left Ahsoka alone in Padmé’s home with Dormé, Captain Typho, and -

“Threepio,” she said in surprise as he came tottering out of the kitchen. “Where’ve you been?”

“Oh, Ahsoka! Mistress Padmé asked that I power down for the night.” His eyes gleamed golden as he swiveled to face her. “Oh, dear. I do hope everything’s all right. Everyone was in such a _rush_ last night.”

“Everything’s fine,” said Ahsoka, not because it was, but because keeping Threepio out of the loop was just one more sign that Padmé was a genius. Sometimes Ahsoka wondered whether Anakin hadn’t somehow used the Force to imbue Threepio with all that personality and really overdone it. She’d met a lot of droids, but none were as . . . _developed_ as Anakin’s.

“I’m going to go out for a bit,” she said, pushing back her chair. “Can you tell Padmé when she returns?”

“Certainly, Ahsoka,” said Threepio, his protocols clearly not registering any alarm. Threepio had even less acquaintance subtlety than Anakin did. “Ought I to inquire as to the nature of your errand?”

“I’ve got to see someone about settling a debt." Then she stopped, her hand brushing at her waist. The Council - or the Temple - still had her sabers, confiscated on her arrest. She’d just - forgotten. It was like the absence of her Padawan braid swinging against her neck; the ghost of memory hung on.

The door swished open and Captain Typho reappeared. Ahsoka’s intent must have been obvious, because he raised the eyebrow over his eyepatch.

“Going out, ma’am?”

“I’m not a ma’am,” she said automatically; then tried, in a more friendly tone, “Ahsoka is fine.” She considered him, tilting her head. “I don’t suppose you know where Padmé keeps her blasters?”

“Oh _dear_ ,” said Threepio.

Typho considered her right back, his gaze dropping to her weaponless waist.

“You want just the blasters,” he asked, “or shall we deck you out?”

Ahsoka smiled, and it didn’t really feel too forced.

“What have you got, Captain?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for your comments and kudos! here's my kudos right back at ya: ♥︎♥︎♥︎♥︎♥︎
> 
> eta: oops i forgot to title this chapter hAH fixed that


	3. Allies Unprepared

Lower Coruscant was always charming - the garbage moldering in the streets, the glare of neon in the brackish light. Ahsoka had spent some bad time down here over the last few days, but at least _this_ time holos of her scowling face weren’t shining from every wall.

The munitions factory burned in the underground darkness like an open wound.

The factory wasn’t actually her goal, but she couldn’t help noticing that it was empty. That was . . . surprising, considering that it had been a crime scene.

A shiver like an icy night wind traveled down her back, even though it would be pretty impossible to get an icy wind this far beneath the surface. The memory of Anakin’s voice echoed back to her: “ _What if the whole trial was a set-up_?”

If the day after her trial, the place was abandoned. . .

She’d just come here to search the Force for a trail. But now. . .

Her boot soles echoed on the metal floors as she picked through the wreckage. The hole in the floor gaped into darkness, lit only by the reddish tint of the abandoned forge’s lights. She extended her senses but felt nothing in the whole factory - only an echo of her fight with someone she’d thought was a friend.

She swung herself down through the hole.

The drop echoed through her stomach; she landed lightly, cushioned by the Force. Debris from her fall, torn sheets of metal and chunks of dusted brick, lay in broken heaps around her.

The crates of nanodroids were already gone.

 _It makes sense_ , she told herself. _They probably took them up when they arrested me_. _They wouldn’t just leave them lying around._

But uneasiness chittered at her, a wordless voice in the Force.

Well, she hadn’t come here to do _this_ , had she? So she should get on with what she’d had planned.

Straightening her shoulders, she closed her eyes and extended her senses, the way she’d done last night, before Anakin’s emotions had shocked her. The presence she sought would be familiar; she’d try picking it up here, the last place she’d encountered it. There would be a trail in the Force, and all she had to do was . . .

Look up.

“Well,” she muttered, opening her eyes, “what do you know.”

Bracing against the floor, she gathered the Force and leapt back up through the hole. With a gentle flip, she alighted on the corrugated metal floor.

“Hi, Ventress,” she said to the woman standing with her arms folded less than three arms’ spans away. “Long time no see.”

* * *

Obi-Wan felt Anakin returning.

The tread of his balcony door was digging into his spine, as he’d chosen an awkward place to sit; but he’d wanted the web of the damp air on his face, the occasional patter of the drops hitting the duracrete and bouncing back to land on the backs of his hands, the rush of the falling rain. Storms on Coruscant were so contained, never allowed, by the atmospheric controls, to rage too much - not like storms on other planets that whipped the canopies of trees or the surface of the sea, that lashed your exposed skin and drove through your clothes. He’d been on some miserable campaigns in his life, soaked through and shivering, wishing for the comfort of a Coruscant storm on the other side of a transparisteel frame.

But not now.

The feeling was familiar, if not desirable. He’d needed that physical grounding after Zigoola, when the Sith temple had almost taken him apart and crushed the little it left; after Qui-Gon’s death on Naboo. Each time, he’d meditated, sought enlightenment in the Force, and come out of it feeling . . . unmoored. Cut adrift. It never felt like an answer, and each time he’d needed to feel something, as if reminding himself that a world he could touch was still there.

And in the Force, Anakin shot toward the Temple like a tempest, flashes of lightning sparking, crackling - stinging by the time he got close enough. He wasn’t even trying to shield, to keep control.

Honestly, it had been a relief when he’d left the Temple last night. Even sunk in meditation, Anakin’s presence made drifting in the Force like being trapped in a star system with a powerful sun washing all the other stars out of the sky.

Sighing, Obi-Wan pulled himself to his feet, slid the balcony door shut, and headed for the hangar bay.

He followed the roiling cloud of Anakin’s mood through the speeders and starfighters. Sure enough, there he was, swinging down from the speeder - half-dressed, not wearing any shoes, with a bruise on his cheek and a cut on his lip and looking like he hadn’t slept in a standard week. His emotions weren’t any better: anger, resentment, hurt, guilt, fear were just a few that Obi-Wan could name as they lashed at the edges of his shields like one of those storms that Coruscant didn’t allow.

But when Anakin glanced up and saw him standing at the nose of a snub-fighter, the fear and the guilt . . . intensified. Obi-Wan kept tight control over himself, but the flash of surprise he’d acknowledged - tried to let go of as quickly as it came - when Anakin had come back at all, solidified as something heavier and darker.

Now Anakin was looking sheepish. “Hi,” he said, scratching the back of his neck as he approached.

There were a lot of things Obi-Wan could’ve said, particularly with Anakin projecting so many emotions he shouldn’t be. They were all, he realized, things he didn’t want to say.

“Where are your shoes?” he asked instead.

Anakin looked down at his feet and wriggled his toes, as if testing to see that they were really there. “Around here somewhere, I guess. I forgot them,” he added, as if that cleared anything up.

“And what happened to your face?” Obi-Wan touched his own cheek, because he certainly couldn’t touch Anakin’s.

“Oh, that.” Anakin pulled a face. It felt almost like he was a Padawan again, like Obi-Wan was having to check up on him after some engagement where they’d been parted; but unlike many times when they’d found themselves rehashing that dynamic, Anakin did not, this time, seem to mind - or even notice. “I dunno. It might’ve happened when I crashed the speeder. Yes, I crashed the speeder,” he said, before Obi-Wan could. “Not that speeder” - he pointed his thumb over his shoulder - “a different one. Captain Typho lent me that one. And before you ask, I don’t know what happened to my lip, either.”

“Well, that covers almost everything,” Obi-Wan said mildly. _Except where the rest of your clothes are._ And he wasn’t sure that he wanted to know.

“Right. My robes are where my shoes are, probably,” Anakin said, and started walking. Obi-Wan let him end that part of the conversation and simply fell into step beside him.

As they walked the halls, Anakin garnered stares - for being half-dressed and barefoot, for having traced the hangar explosion to its source, for losing his Padawan, for exposing one of their own as a traitor. Anakin grit his teeth, belligerence pulsing off him, and Obi-Wan felt suddenly raw. He relaxed the edges of his shields, brushing across their bond, a cooling touch like water falling.

Anakin’s eyes cut toward him and some of the scorching heat eased off - to Obi-Wan’s surprise. Anakin was not usually so easily assuaged, even with far less to be upset about.

“Did the Council give you any details?” he asked, and his eyes narrowed. “About where we’re going.”

“No.”

“Even though you’re _on_ the Council?” Anakin’s gaze, as they entered a lift to ascend to their floor, was probing.

Obi-Wan raised his eyebrows, though his surprise, even had it not been faintly sardonic, was entirely fake. If Anakin hadn’t appreciated the Council’s decisions before, he would certainly never trust them again.

“You’re saying they should have briefed me before they briefed me,” he said.

Anakin rolled his eyes, but Obi-Wan sensed no real annoyance. “No. I’m just wondering what the hell they think we should be doing, if it’s not finding who got Barriss - ” His teeth clenched, as if he wanted to bite her name in half. “ - the nanodroids.”

“Yes, I’ve been wondering that as well.”

The lift slid to the stop, the doors swishing open. The storm lashed at the windows set above rows of doors, muting the lights that glowed along the walls. The rain was falling heavier now from darker clouds, thunder rumbling close.

Anakin snorted as he followed Obi-Wan out of the lift. “Figures you’d have already got there. Ahsoka and I only thought about it this morning.”

 _Ahsoka and I_. Like it was still completely natural - like they were still a team. Obi-Wan acknowledged that whisper of dread in his heart, clinging to the memory of watching Anakin through the comlink not an hour ago, of hearing him say, “ _I’m at Padme’s_ ,” and wondering, _Does that mean you’re not coming home?_

He acknowledged the dread and tried to let it go. . . but it stuck.

He palmed open his door, which Anakin followed him through. Obi-Wan resorted to raising his eyebrows again.

“Shouldn’t you get dressed?” he asked as Anakin perched on the arm of the couch.

“I’ll do that later,” he said, waving a careless hand. “I want to talk about Barriss and the droids. What did you figure out?”

Not “what are your theories.” Sometimes, Anakin’s faith in him was matched only by his disappointed anger at others.

“You tell me, young one,” Obi-Wan said, sinking onto the other edge of the couch.

“ _I’_ m not the great strategist,” Anakin said. He folded his arms, as if Obi-Wan was being difficult. It was petulant and entirely Anakin, and it made something in Obi-Wan ache. But Anakin couldn’t feel it, because Obi-Wan’s shielding was impeccable, and for that he was immeasurably grateful.

“No,” he murmured, “but you got there in the end.” He looked away, glad that his smile was slight enough that it could hide behind his beard, when Anakin glowered.

“I’m waiting,” he said idly, when Anakin only continued to glower.

He groaned. “ _Fine_. Where’d she get them? If they were dropped off at the abandoned munitions warehouse to set Ahsoka up, how’d they get there? If they were stored at the warehouse, or even surplus when the place shut down, how’d she find out about them? Though, if the place was abandoned, it’s unlikely she could’ve gotten the droids from there, they probably wouldn’t’ve have worked if they were just leftovers - did anyone check what the factory produced?”

“I did, and you’re right: they certainly didn’t produce nanodroids. Shells, blasters - nothing too advanced. And they’ve been shut down for more than 30 years. The nanodroids were of fairly recent manufacture . . . and they’re of Techno Union make.”

“Barriss was working with _Separatists_?” Anakin’s tan was too healthy for him to blanch, but he did look gray. He shoved himself to his feet, pushing a hand through his hair, and started to pace. “This _proves_ it! This proves what I told Ahsoka - ”

“What did you tell Ahsoka?” Obi-Wan asked calmly, even as Anakin’s mood lashed at him again like the rain driving at his balcony door. So much for Anakin being uncharacteristically calm.

But instead of rounding on him, as Obi-Wan half expected, Anakin stopped and darted an almost . . . nervous look his way. His emotions churned like a choppy sea, the guilt rising again, and Obi-Wan felt his own dread rising in response. And the feeling did not abate when Anakin hunched, then straightened his shoulders, as if bracing for impact, his eyes darting from Obi-Wan to a shriveled plant on the window-sill, to Obi-Wan, to the gray balcony door - unable to settle.

 _Spit it out, Anakin,_ he wanted and yet didn’t want to say.

“I told her we should go after Dooku,” Anakin said, staring straight ahead, “and stop the war at the top.”

Obi-Wan blinked. Anakin was clenching and unclenching his fists, his chin raised, defiant and yet . . . scared. Not of Dooku - that was clear - but of something Obi-Wan could not pin down.

“Well,” he said eventually, “that wasn’t what I was expecting you to say.”

Anakin’s forehead crinkled in clear confusion as his eyes cut toward Obi-Wan, as if trying to figure him out. He reached out in the Force, a tentative brush that Obi-Wan couldn’t bring himself to meet. He had to keep his shields shut tight or he might -

“I thought you were going to tell me you’re leaving the Order.”

Anakin’s eyes widened - just a bit, like he hadn’t meant them to - and the guilt crashed against Obi-Wan in a breaking wave.

“Ah,” he said softly. He raised his hand - it curled, shaking, into a fist - that he pressed against his mouth as he glanced out the window, as if out there lay some kind of answer, something to turn this from reality into a nightmare from which he could wake up.

“I. . .” Anakin sounded lost. “I don’t. . .”

His comm buzzed.

“ _Shit_ \- ” he snarled, digging it out with an expression that said he might be chucking it out the window.

When he flicked the call on, Ahsoka’s image sprang to life. Her back was to Obi-Wan; she raised her hands in a placating gesture at the look on Anakin’s face.

“ _Sorry!_ ” she said. “ _I thought you’d have your comm turned off in the meeting_.”

“I’m not in the meeting. What is it? Is something wrong?”

“ _No, nothing - I was just going to see if you could get something from the Temple for me_.”

Her tone was deliberately casual, which told Obi-Wan that it wasn’t really “nothing.”

Anakin frowned. “Get what from the Temple?”

“ _Oh, stop dancing around,_ ” said a gravelly, very familiar voice from off-screen, and then a long, thin arm pushed Ahsoka to the side so its owner could lean in.

“Ventress?” Anakin squawked, as Ahsoka pushed back to avoid getting shoved out of the holo. “You went to find _Ventress_?”

“That’s less mad than your plan to go after Dooku,” Obi-Wan murmured, low enough that neither of the girls would hear him; Anakin shot him an offended look, making his chest ache again.

“ _She can help us,_ ” Ahsoka said, holding her ground with level dignity.

“ _Not until I get my kriffing lightsabers back,_ ” Ventress said, pointing a finger up at Anakin. “ _I’m not listening to a single vaping word from either of you Jedi until I have them in hand._ ”

“And even then, don’t count on anything, I bet,” Anakin said, his lip curling.

“ _Helping your little apprentice got me into this position,”_ Ventress said, her tone indicating that her own expression was no more approving than his. “ _Your fucking rogue Jedi stole my sabers and you_ owe _me, Skywalker. Get. Them. Back to me._ ”

Then she stalked out of the holo, leaving Ahsoka looking up at Anakin.

“ _She really should get them back,_ ” Ahsoka said. “ _I made her a deal, before Barriss attacked. She upheld her end of the bargain._ ”

And Ventress was doubtlessly clever enough to know that with the Jedi Order in so much disarray, they could hardly beg a pardon for her and hope to get results. Obi-Wan supposed it would fall to him to at least get the Council off her back. It was all they could manage in this climate.

“Right, yeah, I’ll - look into that.” Anakin tapped his fingers on the holocom. “You’re okay, Snips? Where are you?”

“ _Lower levels. I’m fine. Comm me when you know about the sabers, okay?_ ”

“Yeah, fine. Stay safe, will you?”

“ _You know me, Master. I like the quiet life_.”

Her image vanished with a soft buzz as Anakin collapsed onto the couch, groaning. He scrubbed his hands across his eyes, then left them laced across his face, as if he could hide behind them.

“‘Master,’” Obi-Wan repeated, watching him.

“I think it’s just reflex,” Anakin muttered from behind his fingers. “Like when I call you that.” He dropped his hands and stared up at the ceiling, the lost look returning. “She’s said she’s not coming back - that she isn’t a Jedi anymore.”

Obi-Wan had nothing to say to that. All he could think was, _That’s going to be you, too, isn’t it?_

“Obi-Wan. . .”

He looked at Anakin, who was still staring at the ceiling, as if he couldn’t bear to look away. Then he drew in a breath and let it silently out, his gaze meeting Obi-Wan’s, quiet, waiting.

“Are we losing the war?”

And he had only the truth to give.

“Yes, Anakin. We are.”

* * *

“Always a pleasure to talk to Skywalker again,” said Ventress as Ahsoka clicked off her comlink. “Like a bad case of flesh-eating virus on the rebound.”

Ahsoka couldn’t help rolling her eyes. “I’d never have guessed you didn’t get along.”

Ventress had her arms crossed, her hip cocked. On some people, the gesture might have looked casual; on her, it was somehow telegraphing her complete willingness to snap your neck. The look she gave Ahsoka then was not substantially more reassuring.

“Your precious _Master_ came and had a little talk with me while you were locked up in gaol,” she said. Her fingers, curled loosely over the opposite elbow, rose and traced along her jaw, her gaze almost speculative. “Threw me into a wall and choked me. Not very _Jedi-like_ behavior.”

She didn’t look or sound perturbed, but she wouldn’t be. Ahsoka was pretty sure that Ventress considered violence a matter of course. She’d probably have been disturbed only if Anakin had tried to be nice. 

“He isn’t my Master,” she said, “not anymore.”

“You called him ‘Master’ not two minutes ago,” Ventress said flatly.

Had she? It was impossible right now to let go of the emotion that called up - she didn’t even know if she wanted to - but she could force herself to shrug, as if it didn’t matter. “Habit. I left the Jedi yesterday.”

Ventress’ eyes narrowed - blue, like Anakin’s and Master Obi-Wan’s, even like Ahsoka’s own, but wholly different; winter sky-icy, when everything is burnt from the cold. Ahsoka felt a probing sensation against her mind, like nails scraping lightly against frosted metal, and tightened her shields.

“You and I aren’t _that_ close,” she said dryly.

“You know, I could be insulted,” Ventress said, her eyes still narrowed. “Clearly, I’m no longer any kind of threat. All it took was keeping some clone troopers from dragging you off. Either I’m getting _pathetically_ soft or you’re overly trusting.”

Ahsoka tried and failed to work through this convoluted former-Sith-acolyte reasoning. “Okay, I’ll bite. What?”

“Hmm.” Ventress studied her a few moments longer, tapping her long fingers against her own jaw. Then she said, “I’m hungry. Buy me something to eat while we wait for Skywalker - _if_ he shows up.”

She turned on her heel and strode off into the firelight-streaked darkness.

Ahsoka raised her hands skyward, asking the abandoned munitions factory, _Why are darksiders so weird?_  

But she followed.

After all, if she and Anakin were going to get Ventress’ help in going after Dooku, they’d need more than just her lightsabers.

Ventress didn’t bother to check if Ahsoka was following her, but she probably didn’t need to. Ahsoka could feel her in the Force, glowing sunset-red like the munitions factory in the dark; she assumed Ventress could feel her in return. She followed Ventress into a dingy bar, the kind where she and Anakin might have rustled up lowlifes. The lighting was cold green, like a malfunctioning lightsaber, and heavy on the dim and shadowy. Ahsoka was glad for Togruta senses; as a human, she’d have been struggling to see. It made her wonder if Ventress had enhanced senses or if she’d adapted like Anakin and Master Obi-Wan, using the Force when sight failed.

A serving droid trundled up to their table. One of its eye sockets was busted and its voice box badly deteriorated. Ahsoka felt sorry for it; she would bet it was knocked around a lot in a place like this. Anakin would have been angry.

“May. . . I-” Its voice fritzed. “-ake . . youuur order.”

Ventress ordered something greasy; Ahsoka placed a gentler order for a bottle of juice and fished in the hidden pocket in her waistband for the credit chip Padmé had lent her, hoping it wouldn’t reject a charge from a place like this. But as the scan completed, the droid’s remaining eye flashed white in approval.

“You’re feeling sorry for the damn droid,” Ventress said. She leaned back in the booth, sliding one arm along the top of the seat, angling her body to stretch out her legs. “It’s all over your face. Skywalker failed to teach you control - though,” she snorted, “he never had any to impart in the first place.”

“Control isn’t Anakin’s main concern,” Ahsoka said, unoffended. It would be like getting mad at Artoo for being a droid.

Ventress’ mouth curved in what wasn’t exactly a smile. “I’d noticed. That boy’s always been far too easy to exploit.”

Ahsoka wondered if this was Ventress’ way of giving her a little advice or if it was simply gloating.

“I always wondered why they allowed him to choose you.” Ventress picked up the beer the serving droid rattled onto the table. Ahsoka took her own bottle of saberrie juice from his unsteady tray. “A hotheaded Padawan for an equally hotheaded Master. It hardly seemed the Jedi way.”

Ahsoka twisted the cap off her bottle and swigged a mouthful of juice - tarter than it should’ve been, probably past its expiration date - as she mulled over that thought. Ventress watched her with narrowed eyes, unperturbed by the silence. Unless Ahsoka’s eyesight was suddenly failing her in the dimness, a smirk was shadowing Ventress’ mouth.

“You know a lot about the Jedi,” Ahsoka said at last. “Real stuff, I mean - not things people _think_ they know.”

Ventress snorted again. “I’ve fought the Jedi for years, girl - probably longer than you’ve been alive. You pick up a few things.”

“Like I said, people _think_ they know things. They often really don’t.” Her gaze chased Ventress’, but the other woman was now looking across the bar. “You do, though.”

In the corner, a Rodian jumped up from his card game with a shout; Ahsoka felt the Force's warning flare, hot like a burst of blaster fire, a heartbeat before the gun went off. The Rodian crumbled to the floor, his Weequay partner laughing. Ventress snorted a third time around the neck of her bottle.

“You fish just as subtly as Skywalker does, too,” she said as their serving droid clanked back with her food.

The smell of the burnt grease made Ahsoka wrinkle her nose, but Ventress dug in with gusto. The contrast between this place and Padmé’s apartment was dizzying; she should probably be learning something from it. But like Anakin, she wasn’t too good at philosophizing, either.

(Ventress also ate like a nerf.)

“I don’t trade something for nothing,” she said around a mouthful of greasy nuna leg. “You want information, little Padawan, you trade information.”

“It must be hard to have conversations with you,” Ahsoka said dryly. “Except, what am I saying - I’m having one now, and it _is_.”

“Now you know what they teach us on the dark side,” Ventress said.

It took Ahsoka a moment to realize it was a joke, and another moment to realize she wanted to laugh. By then, though, it was too late, so she just swallowed it.

Maybe she wasn’t too good at having conversations either. Ventress was looking at her oddly.

“I didn’t know they also taught you how to make jokes,” said Ahsoka, hiding her smile.

“They don’t. There wouldn’t be any point - we’re meant to fight Jedi, who don’t have a sense of humor.” She ripped a last piece of meat off the bone and washed it down with a mouthful of beer. Definitely eating like Anakin. “Is that why you left?”

“You don’t get something for nothing,” Ahsoka reminded her, and smiled sweetly at the look Ventress gave her.

“I’m glad you reminded me,” she said in a silky tone. “You owe me, after all.”

Ahsoka raised her eyebrows. “That’s why I’m getting your sabers back for you.”

“ _That’s_ payback for getting them stolen in the first place.”

“This is the kind of logic they teach you on the dark side?” Ahsoka muttered, but Ventress ignored her.

“Those sabers help me do my job. While we’re waiting on them, you can take their place.” Her smirk sliced across her mouth as Ahsoka blinked, uncomprehending. “Come on.” She tossed the empty bottle into her dinner basket, swiping a full bottle from the serving droid as it swung, rumbling, around the drunken Weequayan who’d so recently shot his Rodian card partner.

“We’re going bounty hunting,” she said, and smiled.

Then she reached out and grabbed the passing Weequayan by the throat, and hurled him across the room.

He crashed into the bottles lined up behind the bar, tumbling to the floor in a shatter of glass.

The whole room roared into action.

Someone tried to grab Ahsoka from behind; spinning, she knocked their grip away, and followed with a Force-enhanced jab to their breastbone that sent them flying into the crowd behind. The lot went down like bowling pins as Ventress threw a Nikto into one of the overhead lights. The whole apparatus crashed to the floor in a shower of sparks, as a masked figure slipped out the door.

Ahsoka’s Jedi senses and Togruta twined together, whispering: _hunt._

Ventress was suddenly at her side, gripping her shoulder hard.

“There’s our quarry,” she murmured, the low timbre of her voice and the iron grip of her hand sparking something in Ahsoka’s blood, the way she always felt with Anakin on the edge of a fight. “Follow me, _little_ _Soka_.”

Ahsoka tensed, the spark in her blood dousing into ash as regret and grief flooded her - but Ventress was already off.

Shaking the emotions lose - not releasing them into the Force, only pushing them aside - Ahsoka vaulted over a groaning Twi’lek and hit the floor at a run.

Ventress didn’t know what that name meant. She was just being mocking.

Ahsoka let the memory of Master Plo’s voice fade behind her as she followed Ventress into the lower streets’ eternal night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter was going to be longer and include more tense obi-wan & anakin conversation, but they were stressing me out, so instead ventress threw some folks into light fixtures. (she wasn't going to start that till _next_ chapter, initially.)
> 
> thank you for your kind comments and kudos ♥︎


	4. Steady On

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *sidles back after a four month hiatus with a bridge chapter* so here i am, with a short-ish chapter, trying to get myself back into gear. cue the usual laments of a long semester of teaching, the coming of the end-times, and general existential malaise. 
> 
> here's to anyone still reading ♥︎

_“Are we losing the war?”_

_“Yes, Anakin. We are.”_

Anakin strode down the hall, trying not to panic, trying to release the choking waves of emotion into the Force. _Jedi habits can go hang themselves,_ snarled a part of him with a spike of fury, _they got Ahsoka put on trial for espionage, murder, treason--_

A light fixture shuddered on the wall, bolts creaking and fuse sparking, and he winced. He grabbed the emotion and pushed it away, like opening a curtain.

The lamp flickered and died. At least it didn’t explode.

Flexing his fingers, heart thudding, he moved on.

Rain pounded at the windows.

 _Obi-Wan isn’t supposed to say we’re losing. He’s not supposed to say -- we’re not supposed to be -- we CAN’T_ \--

More lamps flickered as he passed them, flaring and sparking. He moved faster, breathing in and out, measured, or trying.

 _Padme,_ he thought. _Padme will know what to do. She has a plan._

He realized, then, that he hadn’t thought Padme was _right_. He’d thought Obi-Wan knew something Padme didn’t; something the Jedi Council had told him that they’d never tell Anakin; some knowledge he thought Anakin wasn’t ready to hear.

He’d trusted Obi-Wan, and this whole time Obi-Wan had known. . .

Had known they were losing, and --

The door slid open in front of him, a door he didn’t remember reaching.

The lamps in the archives flickered as he stepped inside.

A few Jedi, padawans, and initiates looked around. They stared, the erratic light playing sharp across their faces.

_There is no emotion, there is peace --_

There was no peace, only loss --

Something moved against him in the Force, a gentle wave of calm. _Obi-Wan._ Anakin knew him like he knew the sound of his voice.

Obi-Wan had followed him. Of course he had.

 _But he lied_ \--

Anakin didn’t know what to think or feel.

 _Focus on the task_ , he thought. _Ventress’ lightsabers. And they’ve still got Ahsoka’s too._

And if the Jedi really were losing. . .

“Anakin?” Obi-Wan’s voice came quietly from behind him.

He closed his eyes, clenched his mechanized hand, and thought of Padme, her wisdom and strength.

When he opened his eyes, the lights had stopped flickering.

“I’m going,” he said, his voice rough, and headed for the vaults.

Jocasta Nu appeared as if manifested by the Force before Anakin could reach the forcefield.

“May I help you, Knight Skywalker?” He couldn’t read her tone -- disapproving, sympathetic -- but everyone would be releasing their emotions about Ahsoka, wouldn’t they? Like it didn’t even matter.

He itched under his skin.

“I need to get into the archives,” he said curtly as Obi-Wan joined him.

Master Nu’s gaze slid over Obi-Wan, then back to Anakin. “Archive admission requires the clearance of two Council members, Master Skywalker -- Master Kenobi.”

 _And that’s not you_ , was what she was too polite to say.

“Of course,” Obi-Wan said, his voice giving nothing away. “Pardon us a moment.”

He touched Anakin’s shoulder. An electric current whispered across Anakin’s skin; he shivered. Annoyed and unsettled, he turned away from Master Nu and her opaque expression and followed Obi-Wan into the silent, towering stacks.

“We need those sabers!” he hissed, his heart beating an erratic rhythm. He glanced nervously at a nearby lamp, but its light held steady.

“Did I say I was giving up?” Obi-Wan asked, dry as ever, as he fished out his comlink.

Plo Koon’s blue image unfolded with a _frrtz_ , flickering with the broken line of the holo.

“Obi-Wan,” he said in his slow, deep voice; then, “Skywalker,” and he folded his hands atop the other, bowing toward Anakin. “How may I be of service?”

Anakin thought there was a thread of sadness, or maybe regret, in his voice. Ahsoka had mentioned, before, that Master Plo had talked about training her before she was assigned to Anakin in the way it just wasn’t done. Maybe things would’ve turned out better for her if Plo _had_ been given the chance.

Maybe it would’ve turned out worse.

“Anakin and I need access to the archives,” said Obi-Wan quietly to Plo. “Security measures have tightened in the wake of -- ” His eyes flickered to Anakin, who hadn’t expected Obi-Wan to be so forthright. “ -- well, I don’t need to explain, do I.”

“Indeed not. May I ask, Skywalker. . .” Plo turned his face toward Anakin, who braced for the inevitable questions -- was he going to lie? Or tell the truth? -- “have you seen Ahsoka?”

Anakin blinked. “I -- yeah. She’s. . .” He had no words to describe that crackling void he’d felt between them, the way she’d reached out across it. “. . . safe.”

Well, if right now she was larking around in the lower levels with _Ventress_ \--

“I will inform Master Nu that you are reviewing evidence with regards to Barriss,” said Master Plo after a long moment. He bowed again, more deeply this time. “May the Force be with you both.”

The holo-image vanished with a _bzzt_. Anakin felt like a fist was sitting in his throat.

“Master Plo disagreed with the Council’s decision to expel Ahsoka from the Order,” Obi-Wan said, still in that same measured voice, like nothing was amiss. It had to be, but sometimes Anakin wanted to--

“And did _you_?” he said harshly.

An odd expression shivered across Obi-Wan’s face, like a leaf falling upon still water’s surface.

“So did I,” he said quietly. Then, tucking the comlink away, he strode out of the stacks.

Anakin slumped against a databook shelf, that fist in his throat stinging, turning to water. He scrubbed his flesh hand over his face, breathed into his palm, and followed Obi-Wan back into the pale light falling from the towering windows.

A lamp on a nearby desk trembled, and the Padawan sitting beside it shifted away.

* * *

Master Nu’s eyelid flickered as Master Plo’s image disappeared. Perhaps her gaze lingered on Obi-Wan a moment. But all she said was, “Access granted, Master Kenobi. Please be aware that nothing may be removed from the archives without Master Yoda’s or Master Windu’s clearance.”

Obi-Wan did not freeze in place, but he was annoyed with himself. He should have known. Well, they’d find the sabers first, then worry about getting them out.

“Thank you, Master Nu.” He turned toward Anakin -- who was already nipping in through the door as it slid open. Swallowing a sigh, Obi-Wan followed him into the soft light of the archives.

At least these weren’t shorting out, like the ones in the hall or the library. He felt the twin echoes of admiration that Anakin had stopped himself from breaking them, and dismay that his emotions were so out of control.

It was no wonder they were; Obi-Wan knew he couldn’t really have expected any less. But Anakin was. . .

Well, at present, stopping in the middle of the grey-white corridor and turning abruptly, his expression incongruously sheepish. “I -- uh. How do we find them?”

A whisper of fondness brushed Obi-Wan; not through the Force, but within himself. He let it fade. _Distraction_. “Like this.”

Reaching for a black touch-screen panel in the wall, he keyed in the search. Numbers and letters glowed green on the pad. “Besh-67-Aurek Forn-102. This way.”

“How are we going to get them out?” Anakin muttered as they followed the numbers. “Smuggle them out in a mouse droid?”

Obi-Wan considered. “Do you think that would work?”

Anakin looked surprised, perhaps that his plan wasn’t being immediately shot down. “Worth a shot.” He turned toward the wall and started poking at the panel. “Where’s the kriffing -- supply closet! There it is.”

Obi-Wan watched him veer off down a side corridor and key open the supply closet door.

“ _Obi-Wan. . . are we losing the war?”_

“ _Yes, Anakin, we are._ ”

The memory of Anakin’s shock stung, like swallowing a lungful of sea water.

Anakin hadn’t expected him to say yes. And in a strange way, which Obi-Wan knew to be misguided, he felt like he’d betrayed Anakin by telling him the truth.

He knew he should say something now, to address that weight that had hung between their words since he’d said _yes, Anakin, we are_ \-- no, before that; the call to Anakin at Padme’s -- but that was still too late. . . when Ahsoka --

“Here we go,” Anakin said, the mouse droid tucked under his arm. “What was that reference number again?”

“This way,” said Obi-Wan, and stepped away from those preoccupying thoughts like a man moving out of the rain.

The Force rumbled like the storm against the Temple walls.

* * *

“I thought it was just one guy!” Ahsoka shouted as she kicked a Trandoshan into the wall.

“These are _reinforcements_ ,” Ventress said, almost lazily. With a wide gesture, she threw two Weequayans charging her across the narrow alley and into a trash bin.

“Surely you remember those,” she added as Ahsoka tossed an Ithorian into his friend, sending them both sprawling.

“Sounds familiar, yeah.” Ahsoka sprang out of the way of a knife-slash from another Trandoshan -- or was it the same one she’d kicked into the wall?

In all honesty, throwing a bunch of sleemos around a dirty alley was turning out to be exactly what she was in the mood for. Not that she planned on telling Ventress -- it might put her off, knowing she’d been helpful.

Last night, Ahsoka had been numb. This morning, she wanted. . .

Clenching her fist, she used the Force to rip an old electric sign off its hinges and hurled it at three of their attackers. One of them tried to back away; with a flick of her hand, she tripped him, grabbed his ankle and swung him around --

Ventress slammed a piece of lead pipe into his head and he dropped like a sack of cement.

The alley fell still.

Ahsoka felt her breath in her lungs; she tasted the synthoil, the layers of trash and old water; the buzzing of a neon sign far overhead prickled at her teeth. The Force murmured beneath her skin, sharp, unfamiliar but not.

She shivered.

And saw, on a plane beyond sight, a burnished light in the Force radiating from a rusty balcony overhead. _Warm_ , she thought.

 _Catch,_ instinct whispered.

She put up her hand.

Her lightsaber landed smack in her palm.

She looked up. The Force rippled and glowed around Anakin as he leaned over the balcony railing. The shadows lay over the right side of his face, covering the bruise on his cheekbone. In the Force, his emotions draped down like the neon light over the dirt and shadows.

Well, he wasn’t furious. . . but he wasn’t content. . . so the talk with Obi-Wan had gone . . . how, exactly?

He swung over the balcony railing and dropped to the concrete next to her -- definitively not putting his back to Ventress. “And the shoto,” he said, as if picking up a recent conversation, and he tossed over her second saber. “Gotta have the set.”

“I don’t care what anybody says,” she said. “You can learn.”

He smirked at her, but his gaze was already drifting across the bodies strewn across the ground.

One of the men Ventress had thrown into the dumpster poked his head out, groaning. Anakin’s eyes narrowed and the lid of the dumpster banged down, knocking the man back out of sight.

Ventress stood at the other end of the carnage, her arms crossed, her stance deceptively light, cold blue eyes narrowed on Anakin. Her attention flicked to Ahsoka for a moment, then back to him.

“I certainly hope you brought more than just that _one_ pair,” she said, her drawl like sandpaper.

“Yeah,” Anakin said curtly. He cast a disdainful eye over the carnage; Ahsoka rubbed her shoulder, feeling self-conscious, even though she’d seen Anakin choke people who weren’t giving him the information he wanted. “Clean up these sleemos and we’ll talk.”

Ventress’ frown could cut like a knife. “I’m not interested in _talking_ , Skywalker.”

“Then no sabers. Ahsoka.” He jerked his head in a ‘let’s go’ gesture.

“If he isn’t your master anymore, _little Soka,_ you shouldn’t follow at his heels wherever he bids,” Ventress said, the sandpaper in her voice growing more abrasive.

Ahsoka asked the Force for patience. She was the one who’d thought it was sort of a good idea to bring them together, after all. If this plan was going to work, she was going to have to put up with them doing this a _lot_.

Maybe it wasn’t too late to get another plan. . .

“Look,” she said, holding up her hands, “we all need to talk. Let’s clean up these guys and--”

“ _She’s_ the one who doesn’t want to talk,” Anakin said immediately, pointing at Ventress.

“I’d rather kiss a Hutt,” she said, proving that she and Anakin were about equally mature. “But we had an _agreement_ , Skywalker.” She flexed her fingers. “Please, don’t mind me -- this lot was just a warm up.”

Anakin turned to face her fully, eyes narrowed, frustration bleeding toward aggression and something like. . . anticipation. “That sounds fine to me.”

Ahsoka tapped her foot. Neither of them noticed, too busy getting ready to try and thrash each other.

“We’re going to find Dooku and stop the war,” she said. “You want in?”

Ventress froze; Anakin too. He gave her a betrayed look; she folded her arms at him.

“Did the Jedi rot your brains?” Ventress asked after a long moment. “You didn’t leave in time, then. There is no possible outcome where the two of _you_ can triumph against _Count Dooku_.”

“Well,” Ahsoka said, trodding on Anakin’s foot to keep him from blurting anything out. “That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”

Ventress’ tongue passed over her bottom lip. Ahsoka couldn’t read her -- not in the Force, not by expression. She’d closed herself off perfectly.

Beside Ahsoka, Anakin was perfectly quiet.

“You’re right about one thing, little Soka,” Ventress said, her rasping drawl almost back to normal. “I’ve got a bounty to collect.”

She bent to grab the Barabel lying at her feet and turned her back on Anakin and Ahsoka, dragging her unconscious load behind her down the dark, narrow street.

Ahsoka glanced at Anakin, who was watching Ventress walk away, saying nothing, not moving. The Force murmured around him like dark, murky water.

“She _didn’t_ say not to follow her,” Ahsoka said.

A part in the water; a glimmer of light. Half of Anakin’s mouth smiled.

“Then lead on, Snips.”

Ahsoka stepped over the ruin she’d made of the electric sign and followed Ventress into the gloom, Anakin right behind her.

* * *

“It’s a bold plan,” Bail said.

Rain dripped off the leaves of a nearby shaak tree, the melody in counterpoint to the eternal stream of speeders far overhead. The Alderaanian gardens on the consulate roof were quiet in the falling rain; the low voice of the thunder folded over Padme’s and Bail’s voices in turn.

“Too bold?” Padme asked.

“I do not know if anything can be ‘too bold’ anymore,” Bail said heavily. “But taking a stand _against_ the Jedi -- they have always been our allies, Padme.”

“Have they?” she asked quietly. She shook her head at Bail’s sharp look. “I don’t doubt their loyalty to the Republic, or even to a greater good. We merely have different opinions on . . . call it philosophy. That is not enough for political opposition.”

They both sighed, knowing the truth of that. Politics necessitated compromise; the Jedi knew that much, at least the ones on the Council. She was not sure that Anakin, or even Obi-Wan, did. Anakin had the political worldview of a concussed duckling, and Obi-Wan had never struck her as being much better. His intelligence had a broader scope than Anakin’s, which tended to cleave to certain matters with decisive brilliance and remain haphazard at others; but Obi-Wan was, in a uniquely _Jedi_ way, perhaps the most idealistic person she’d ever met.

In fact, she wondered how Ahsoka’s leaving would affect _him_. Anakin’s agony of indecision, she suspected, came less from a loss of faith in the Order than from the personal loss of Ahsoka herself . . . and from the knowledge that, if he left, he’d have to leave Obi-Wan behind. No matter how much Anakin griped that Obi-Wan didn’t understand him, that he hindered him in this or that, no matter that he sometimes blamed Obi-Wan for the rain’s being wet, she knew that without Obi-Wan, Anakin would not know what to do.

And it wouldn’t be the usual tenor of that claim, a vague aimlessness and indecision. It would cut far, far deeper.

Memory whispered to her, a day she wanted to forget; a day when Anakin had ridden back across the wastes of Tatooine cradling his mother’s body, and wept with equal parts rage and grief. He had not known what to do then, and it had been . . .

 _Terrible_ did not seem to do it justice.

She was convinced that Anakin was capable of great goodness. But -- she had always been honest with herself -- he needed . . . guidance. He knew it himself. “Not me. Someone wise,” he’d said, when she’d half-teased him over his ambition to run the galaxy and tell everyone the right way to behave. Through Anakin ran a sense of justice so deep that when it was threatened or broken, he lost all sense of direction. It had happened on Tatooine. It had happened, in smaller measure, last night.

And she feared that, no matter whom Anakin stayed with, something vital would be damaged in a very great way.

She did not want to see what would break if he and Obi-Wan were divided.

She checked her comlink, even though it hadn’t beeped. Perhaps he hadn’t seen the message. Perhaps he was ignoring her. Obi-Wan could be charmingly, annoyingly, passive-aggressive.

More likely, he and Anakin were having a massive quarrel.

Or, even more likely, not talking at all.

Bail had walked quietly by her side down the damp path, past the leaves glittering with moisture, while she mulled all of this over. He was a good friend, one of the best she’d ever known.

“The war isn’t going to stop,” she said. “The Chancellor keeps amassing power, systems are falling, debt amasses. We’re being crushed. Lately I’ve felt as if . . .” She clenched her hand in the heavy velvet of her skirt. “It reminds me of those days during the blockade on Naboo.” Of being _helpless_.

That was a feeling she loathed more than any other she’d experienced. She knew that hopelessness would be worse. . . but she’d always held on to hope. She could not let go of it. But if she stayed helpless much longer, she feared that. . .

“I know what you mean,” Bail said, and she knew he did -- in more ways than one. He looked at something far beyond the sodden garden, the lines of his face graying, and she knew he was thinking of Breha.

She touched his arm; after a moment, he folded his hand over hers, trying to summon a smile. She squeezed his fingers, because that was the only comfort anyone could offer in the face of such recurring grief: the loss of yet another child, before it had even lived.

“But you think I’m reaching for any solution, just to have one?” she said.

“I do not know. What happened in the last few days. . .” They continued along the path, their hands still linked. “Is Padawan Tano all right?”

“She’s coping as best she can. The probability is high that Anakin will leave with her.”

“And if he does, it might very well be the best thing to make use of that.” Bail’s acknowledgement was heavy.

Padme wasn’t any more thrilled with the idea, even though it had been her own. “I mean to use his departure to weaken public support for the war. People hide behind the Jedi, even as they accuse and dislike them. As long as they continue to see the Jedi as convenient, their view of the war will remain on the same track. If we can further compromise their acceptance of the Jedi as their best shield. . .”

“It may help sway public opinion to look for another solution.” Bail nodded. “Obi-Wan will be furious with us. And if you reach out to Anakin at this stage. . .”

“It may compromise my political integrity. I know.”

He squeezed her hand in turn. They’d never talked about it, but she knew that Bail knew. It wasn’t just his sensitivity to others, or his ability to recognize suppressed longing, even if the shadow took a different shape; Anakin had the subtlety of a lame bantha. He couldn’t have effectively hidden anything in a cave at midnight on a moonless planet.

A clanking along the path made them both turn; Bail’s silver protocol droid, with far less personality than Threepio but, admittedly, far less neuroticism, was proceeding towards them.

“Yes, Three-kay?” Bail asked.

“A Jedi is here to see you, Viceroy,” said the droid. “Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ETA: i only realized after all the lovely compliments that a) "concussed duckling" was something i'd taken from terry pratchett, and b) i hadn't credited him! *headdesk* he is one of my all-time favorite authors and i've just soaked up his wisdom to the point that it just pops into my thoughts/writing and i inadvertently rob him, ahahah :x so, here's my belated credit. i gotta keep better track! 
> 
> fake PS. it's from "jingo," about leonard of quirm (who's basically leonardo da vinci)


	5. When Is the Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The quote, “Time is life itself, and life resides in the [human] heart" comes from Momo by Michael Ende (and is one of my favorite quotes of all time).

Anakin followed Ahsoka, who followed Ventress to a run-down bounty collection agency for hardworking scumbags. Ventress dragged the Barabel into the office, up to the front of the line, and tossed him up onto the counter. When the Rodian behind her swore a string of objections, she punched him out of the way and turned casually back to the rheumy-eyed Nautolan working the desk. The rest of the line kicked the unconscious Rodian out of the way and chose to let Ventress keep her spot. After all, they probably reasoned, they were still the same distance from the front.

 _Let’s book our next vacation here,_ Anakin thought.

He and Ahsoka found an out-of-the-fight place to stand and tried not to look like Jedi. Anakin had to look down to see if he’d worn robes, but it turned out he hadn’t changed out of what he’d worn from Padme’s. His lightsaber was still hanging from his belt, but Ahsoka had tucked hers into a holster on her hip.

In the end, Obi-Wan hadn’t tried to stop him. He hadn’t said, _We have a mission, you need to come upstairs and forget Ahsoka. Attachments are not the Jedi way, Anakin, and she’s made her choice. You have your duty to the Order._

If he’d imagined what Obi-Wan would’ve said -- not that he had, or anything -- he’d have imagined that. Obi-Wan stern, uncaring, cold, like he didn’t understand that people _cared_ about. . . people.

A nagging voice that sounded like his mother said that didn’t ring exactly right, but it admitted that it didn’t know _how_ to explain Obi-Wan. He’d told Satine, years ago, that he would have left the Order at her word (Anakin had _heard him_ ) but she was dead now and Obi-Wan just went about as if everything was okay. Ahsoka had left the Order in the shadow of a great betrayal, and Obi-Wan just looked tired. And those were just two of the most _recent_ ways he acted like. . . well, “like a droid” wasn’t right. Anakin at least understood droids. _They_ had feelings.

 _Obi-Wan followed him around the archives with the cleaning droids -- a whole passel of them for the sabers, because of course Ventress and Ahsoka each had to use_ two _. They’d talked about calling Artoo, reprogramming the droids to make it through the shafts to the outside where Artoo would be waiting, and not once anything about_ Anakin, you aren’t leaving, I don’t want you to leave _or_ If you leave of course I’ll go with you _not even_ I have a duty to the Order, Anakin _just_

“Anakin,” Ahsoka whispered, her elbow nudging his ribs.

He blinked. The lights all through the office were flickering and fritzing, like the lamps at the Temple. He grit his teeth and tried to let go, but his chest felt full of static.

Ventress turned from the clerk’s desk and looked straight at him, her cold blue gaze unreadable in a way that made him deeply uneasy.

He took a deep breath and focused on Ahsoka’s arm still resting against his side. Concentrating only on that point of warmth, he let his breath out.

With one final tremor, the lights steadied. Ahsoka stayed where she was, pressed lightly against his side.

A few moments later -- or maybe longer; he lost track -- Ventress shoved through the crowd and jerked her chin toward the door. Ahsoka prodded him and he moved, back out onto the dirty street and the endless murky twilight of lower Coruscant.

Ventress waited for them with narrowed eyes. Anakin wished she’d taken off, even with the aim of ambushing them to get her sabers back, and to hell with cooperating. He didn’t want to work with her for any goal.

“If Skywalker’s going to threaten the electricals, we need to go someplace a great deal more private,” she said.

“Just what I wanted to be doing today,” he growled. Ahsoka elbowed him again, though with a lot less support and more please-shut-up.

“You’re welcome to hand over the sabers and drop yourself down a garbage shaft,” Ventress said, like she didn’t dare hope.

“He really does want to talk. Once I’ve explained my plan,” Ahsoka added, when he shot her an appalled look. “But I agree -- someplace . . . out of the way.”

Ventress’ expression was sour. “I’m going to regret this. Make sure you keep up.”

* * *

It probably hadn’t been long at all since Bail’s protocol droid had shuffled off to fetch him. Obi-Wan had always known that time moved differently depending on how you spent it. He’d read, once, while studying ancient Jedi philosophy, “Time is life itself, and life resides in the heart.”

Since his heart felt like a malfunctioning mechanism, he supposed it shouldn’t be expected to keep proper time.

“Obi-Wan?”

He turned from the wall -- he’d been staring at a painting without seeing it; only memories of previous visits told him it was a landscape of Alderaan -- toward the sound of Padme’s voice. She’d come in through a glass door onto the garden outside. He looked at the silver drops of rain clinging to her dark hair instead of at her face, because her voice had registered belatedly as much too kind to bear. He needed -- distance. No emotion. Peace.

_Peace is a lie there is only_

“Obi-Wan?” Now Padme sounded faintly worried.

He shook himself back to the present. _There is no emotion, there is peace_.

Well. If he wanted peace, he shouldn’t have come to see Padme or Bail. They cared, so very openly. Sometimes he wished--

Padme’s hand landed on his arm, then pulled away when he stepped back.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her dark eyes probing, shrewd, compassionate. “You weren’t responding. Is there anything I can get you?”

 _Anakin_ , he thought, absurdly.

He definitely should not have come here.

“Forgive me. I was -- returning your call.”

“I didn’t expect you in person.” She smiled to show she didn’t mind. “Or so soon. I understood you had a meeting with the Council?”

“ _Where is Skywalker, Obi-Wan? We understood he was back in the Temple. And you let him leave again, just like that?” Mace was watching him as if waiting for Obi-Wan’s reaction to guide him -- as if sounding him out, rather than censuring him. And Yoda was quiet, his attention weighing on Obi-Wan in the Force, the edge something almost. . ._

Padme was steering him to one of Bail’s couches. The absence of their host was suddenly apparent and telling. Bail was leaving them alone to talk. Obi-Wan couldn’t even be embarrassed about their careful handling; it was a relief not to have to deal with Bail’s sympathy on top of Padme’s.

On top of the Council’s.

“It was postponed until -- if Anakin returns.”

Padme paused, her hand on his arm, her whole body still. Only her eyes moved, slicing upward to his. He hadn’t actually said it as a sally. It had simply. . . come out.

“You don’t know?” she said slowly, and resumed the light pressure of her hand.

He let her guide him onto the couch. “He took off to rendezvous with Ahsoka. She met up with Ventress, and I believe he was worried.”

Padme blinked. “Why would Ahsoka --” Then she put her hand over her eyes. “Those two,” she muttered. “I turn my back for an hour. . .”

For just that moment, he _had_ come to the right place. No one in the Temple, no one else in the galaxy, would understand an equally powerful impulse to protect Anakin and Ahsoka and wring their necks.

“Anakin seems to think that going after Dooku with only Ahsoka at his side would be the best plan forward,” he said.

Padme dropped her hand with a sigh. “I was hoping talking to you would distract him from that.”

Obi-Wan didn’t know how to respond. Padme, however, went on:

“It’s not a bad idea in _essentials_ , but it would require very strategic planning, and Anakin. . .”

“Has the long-range planning ability of a mountain daisy. Yes, I know.”

Padme’s mouth quirked.

_You and Anakin talked about this, then?_

“What did you wish to talk to me about?” he said. “Your message didn’t say.”

Padme smoothed a hand over her knee. It occurred to him that, in her high-collared dress with slashed sleeves, she looked ready to give an address, one as grim as a blade to the throat. And that fidgeting with her skirt -- it was a nervous gesture.

He should have known. Anakin’s sudden questions about losing the war -- the whole conversation about going after Dooku -- none of it had been very much like Anakin. If Obi-Wan had thought about it at all, which he wasn’t sure he had, he’d put it down to the disturbances of the last few days ( _has it only been a few days?_ ). . .

“Anakin was planning to have a very serious conversation with you,” she said, deepening Obi-Wan’s doubt as to whether they were no longer pretending, even poorly, that she and Anakin were only acquaintances on the same side of a war.

The bad feeling shredded open: if Anakin and Padme were no longer pretending -- if Ahsoka had left, and Anakin was caught so off-balance by just the question of staying or going -- then surely that portended. . .

“I thought you might give a better account of it than he would,” Padme went on. “Of course, you don’t have to tell me anything, but --” The worry was back as she studied him; he saw her from the corner of his eye, for he’d tilted his face slightly away. “Forgive me, Obi-Wan, but you look. . .”

He didn’t say anything. Padme watched him a moment longer, and then finished for him:

“Like it went very badly. Obi-Wan, are you and Anakin leaving the Jedi?”

He had not expected it to be put so bluntly, and then wondered why he hadn’t. Padme could be very tactful, but she had also stormed her own palace at the age of fourteen to reclaim it from usurpers with no more backing than her own guards and handmaidens and a pair of ragtag Jedi. He had never, in fact, known her to back down from anything.

_Except after Geonosis, when you told her that she and Anakin could not continue. . ._

And wasn’t that an irony? Did he really believe -- had he ever really believed -- that he had succeeded there? Wasn’t this whole conversation the last word in a long line of proof that Padme had never actually backed down, not even once?

“You and Anakin discussed this.” His voice came out as calm and mild as ever.

“We did.” Padme didn’t flinch. Unless he was mistaken, she even tilted her chin up a fraction; her fingers tightened on her skirt, though little more than a twitch. “And Ahsoka, too. But he needs most of all to discuss it with _you_.”

“As I said, he felt he needed to find Ahsoka.”

“But when did that happen?” Padme pressed. “Immediately?”

“I wasn’t watching the chronometer, Senator.”

He knew Padme well enough to say that she was repressing annoyance. That was probably the only satisfaction he was going to get out of his conversation.

“Well, then,” she said in a steely voice, “let’s hash it out now. You know Anakin better than anyone--”

 _Do I?_ he thought.

“--do _you_ think he’ll stay, if Ahsoka has left?”

“Sometimes I’m not sure I know Anakin as well as I’d like.”

Padme’s fingers drew tighter on her knee. “Then if he decides to leave -- what will you do?”

He’d had this conversation before. . . only with Master Yoda, years ago. . .

_“I will complete his training in the Force whether he is here or not. . .”_

_“Understand, do you? Anakin’s departure, its consequence?”_

“ _Of course, Master Yoda. If Anakin leaves the Order. . . then I must leave it as well.”_

He’d once sworn that, to himself and to Master Yoda. He’d meant it. But Anakin was no longer a padawan. And there was a war on now, currents swirling around more than just Anakin. . .

“I won’t fault him for leaving,” he said, knowing it was the truth. “Every Jedi must make the decision to stay with the Order or to leave it. We aren’t jailers. For any reason, Anakin may leave, and I wouldn’t fault him. But if he left for Ahsoka, it is only--” _What I would have done for him_ “--it’s a decision only he can make, but I would be. . .”

 _Proud of him_.

He knew, better than anyone, how much courage such a decision would take to follow through. He had been a Jedi all his life. Giving up everything you had ever known was a decision that took enormous strength.

_Ahsoka has that strength._

It had come at such a terrible price.

“Forgive me,” he said, because he didn’t want to say any of that here, now. “I’ve -- lost what I meant to say.”

He couldn’t read the expression on Padme’s face. It looked almost. . . sad.

“Obi-Wan. . .” Her voice was almost halting. “I want to bring an end to the war.”

“Don’t we all?” he said, but slowly, because he was suddenly, unaccountably nervous. _Perhaps not unaccountably --_

“I mean,” Padme said, the hesitation falling away, and she fixed him with a look as determined as the girl who’d planned to march on her own palace; as the young woman who’d stood in an arena beneath the eye of a Sith Lord and beings who’d wished her dead ten times over, “that I have a plan.”

* * *

Ventress led them across empty tracks, up ventilation shafts, along interconnected balconies; a solid half hour of jumping and roaming, until they ended at a door you wouldn’t think twice about. Even the keypad was designed to make you overlook it, hidden beneath a hatch that Ventress unlocked with a slice of the Force.

The hallway beyond was just as plain, but it was clean, and that made it odd in lower Coruscant. The walls were dark but not drab; the lighting low but not gloomy; the floor bare but clearly from intent. The whole thing was stark by design.

The hairs on the back of Anakin’s neck prickled.

“Where are we?” Ahsoka muttered as the door whispered shut behind them.

“A place for the circumspect.”

Ventress ghosted down the hall. As it branched open, they came to a series of elevators; she pressed a button, and a moment later the door slid open.

Anakin and Ahsoka clumped in next to her.

He sent a query to Ahsoka in the Force; she brushed back with a feeling that mirrored his exactly: she didn’t like this place, either, but she didn’t sense any danger.

They edged out of the elevator on the 243rd floor of wherever-this-was. Though it had more carpet on the floor and a few doors along the walls, it didn’t look that different than the hall downstairs.

Anakin eyed the doors as they passed. He wasn’t sure why, but he really didn’t want to meet anyone coming out of them.

Ventress swiped a keycard on a door at the end of the hall. Anakin breathed easier when the door was shut behind him and he and Ahsoka were finally secured in the room. He never would’ve thought that would apply to a room that also had Ventress in it.

“‘Circumspect’?” Ahsoka said. “More like creepy. What _is_ this place?”

“Where people go to enjoy their dirty little secrets.” Ventress crossed to the kitchen area and opened the fridge, pulling out a bottle of high-end beer, a brand that Padme kept on hand for guests.

“And you found it because?” he asked skeptically. A long window ran along the wall, but it didn’t look outside. It had been painted with an abstract landscape that went right along with the uneasy feeling: a rust-shadowed desert dotted with the fossils of buildings long scoured to ruins.

“I wanted someplace _nice_ to stay.” Ventress stretched out on a sofa and gestured with the beer bottle. “Don’t just stand about like disapproving Jedi.”

Anakin realized he really, really wanted to sit down. The scraps of sleep he’d managed last night hadn’t dulled the iron edge of exhaustion that had grafted itself to his bones. He dropped down onto the couch, Ahsoka perching next to him.

Whatever else happened, they were still together. He knew that was right.

It might have been the only thing he knew. . . but it was the truth.

“All right,” Ventress said, her narrowed eyes shifting between them, “get this _plan_ off your chests, so I can get my sabers back and you two out of my life.”

In the Force he felt a ripple from Ahsoka, the equivalent of rolling her eyes. It was distinctly familiar; she did it to him all the time.

“Barriss Offee was behind the bombing of the temple,” she said, which wasn’t the direction Anakin had expected her to take at all. “She ambushed you and stole your sabers to frame you in the process of framing _me_.”

“A shame,” Ventress said. “If she’s in gaol, I won’t be getting my hands around her throat.”

_She’ll be executed -- like they were going to do to Ahsoka._

Anakin felt a pulse of vicious satisfaction at the turning of the tide.

Ahsoka’s eyes darted toward him for just a moment. “Barriss said she wanted to destroy the Jedi because we’ve lost our way. The war just keeps _going_. More clones, more loans, more droids, more systems leaving, more people dying--”

Ventress took a pull from her beer bottle, her indifference broadcasted like a Coruscant holonet show.

“Just fighting each battle the Separatists start isn’t enough,” Ahsoka went on, not letting Ventress get to her. Anakin’s pride in her was, for a moment, a happy distraction. “It’s getting us attacked even at _home_. Someone arranged it. The nanodroids, the factory -- this couldn’t have been Barriss operating on her own.”

“You’re running out of opportunities to make me care,” Ventress said.

 _It’s not working on her_ , Anakin thought at Ahsoka. They couldn’t trade words, but she’d get the general idea. _Let me try_.

“You said you knew how Ahsoka felt,” he said. Ventress went still; her eyes cut toward him. “Because your master abandoned you, too.”

He saw, from the corner of his eye, Ahsoka turn her head to look at him. He didn’t take his eyes off Ventress. She was staring back at him, her eyes as cold as a strip of winter sky, her emotions locked down so tight they might as well not have been there.

But he didn’t need to sense them. He knew.

“You want revenge on Dooku,” he said. “We want to _stop_ Dooku.”

Ahsoka brushed against him in the Force, then retreated; he wondered if he’d burned her again without realizing. He thought of the flickering lamps. But the light in Ventress’ stolen hotel room held steady.

She stared at him with that weighing gaze, sharp around the edges like rusted metal. For just a moment he thought he caught an echo, like a voice fading over the mountains at night, calling for something lost.

And then she blinked and it was gone.

“You and Kenobi together couldn’t manage to defeat _me_ in a straight fight,” she said flatly. “There’s no ending where _you two_ ”--she pointed with the beer bottle--“manage to defeat _Count Dooku_ , a Lord of the Sith and commander of the Dark Side.”

“That’s why we’re asking for your help,” Ahsoka said, leaning forward, earnest. “You . . . know him, we stand a better chance with you.”

“And you stand a better chance with us,” Anakin said.

Something complicated passed through Ventress’ eyes, though her face remained immobile. Then she snorted.

“Somehow I doubt that. Possibly it’s knowing you.” She tossed her empty bottle over her shoulder; it sailed into the recycler with pinpoint precision. “Kenobi clearly isn’t behind this or your plan would be a lot less nonexistent, and this would be a _much_ better sell. Without your clones, you two won’t even make within a thousand lightyears of Dooku before Separatists blast you out of the sky. I decline to join in your suicide rush. Now. Sabers.”

* * *

“ _That’s_ your plan?” Obi-Wan said, aghast. He felt like Padme had swung a blaster into his gut. “After everything the Jedi Order has done, you want to exploit the -- _betrayal_ within our own house?”

“This isn’t an attack against the Jedi, Obi-Wan,” she said, not backing down; he had the flash of a thought that perhaps the grim address that dress portended was to _him_. “This is an attempt to save all of us, the Jedi included.”

“By sowing _more_ discord?”

“Everything is in chaos _already_ ,” Padme said tightly, eyes bright. “You’ve heard them! More money, more clones -- more Jedi on the front lines, more Jedi _dying_. Will that be you, next? You and Anakin are the best they have, but when you’re _all_ they have?”

“I have pledged my life to the Order.” His heart was beating a hard rhythm in his chest. “Whatever Anakin chooses to do, we don’t give up because things are _inconvenient_ \--”

“This isn’t an inconvenience,” Padme said with frustration, “it’s an _impossibility_. Have you looked at the numbers? More systems falling, more planets overrun, and the debt, the tally of lives -- this can’t continue, Obi-Wan! You’ll at least see that!

“We have tried to negotiate peace, but at every turn we’ve been stymied, blocked, overturned. If we can’t win by force or by numbers, if we can’t negotiate surrender, what option is _left_?”

Obi-Wan didn’t, couldn’t, dispute that. When Anakin had asked if they were losing the war, Obi-Wan had told him the truth. But here, now, faced with Padme’s fierce entreaty, when she was proposing the public sacrifice of the Jedi Order, he refused to give ground.

Summoning all of his Jedi pride, he said, “The Force will provide a solution.”

Rain beat against Bail’s windows. Padme’s expression tightened, like she had just shouted in her own mind, _The Force? This is where the Force has brought us!_

But the Separatists, the Dark Side, the Sith. . . they hadn’t won yet. The Jedi were losing, but they hadn’t _lost_.

He’d never thought he would be fighting Padme along with everyone else.

“Forgive me,” she said, her tone taut and steely, “but the rest of the galaxy doesn’t have the time to wait for whatever solution the Force deems fit to provide. I plan to move forward with my proposal. If the Council wishes to contact me on the matter, I will answer them candidly.”

“With your permission, I will notify them,” he said, still, always the Jedi master, though something within him ached. “If you’ll pardon me -- they’ll be expecting my return.”

She stood with her her hands knitted together, her posture regal, and did not try to touch him. More than this disagreement hung between them -- a sudden division, a knowledge that Anakin would contact one of them first -- would, in all likelihood, be returning to one of them only.

And as much as Obi-Wan did not want to. . . if pressed, he would not say _to me_.

“May the Force be with you, Senator.”

Padme nodded, as distant and haughty as Obi-Wan knew he, himself, could be, every inch the woman who had been a queen. “Good luck, Obi-Wan.”

On the landing pad, the wind whipped rain into his bare face. He welcomed it. He felt overheated, agitated, and pushed a hank of hair out of his eyes.

 _You really are a fool,_ he told himself.

Knowing that for certain didn’t make it any easier.

He released the air from his lungs, feeling pressed too thin.

“Oh, Anakin,” he muttered, and had no strength to finish the thought that felt half a curse, half. . . something else.

* * *

Ventress held out her hand for her sabers. Something harsh and jagged glowed off her in the Force, but her hand was steady and her eyes were hard.

For a moment Anakin’s blood sang on the same frequency. He felt Ventress feel it too, felt her cutting Ahsoka out and narrowing on him. Her fingers flexed.

But _he_ couldn’t cut Ahsoka out. He felt her, bubbling with frustration, their link vibrant -- like it should be, like it had been, until all of _this_ had happened.

_the bombing the suspicion the interrogation the imprisonment the escape the hunt the judgment the trial the verdict the truth_

He stepped back, and that grating, thrilling hum between him and Ventress fell silent.

“All right,” he said, shrugging like it didn’t matter, and dug in his pocket where her hilts rested cold against his hip. “You tried, Ahsoka. Here.”

He tossed the sabers at Ventress, who caught them with sharp covetousness. Her face lit infernal red as she punched them alight, her pupils shrinking to pinpricks in the glow. The strange trees on the wall mural twisted higher in the shifting shadows.

Then the blades retracted, and the apartment dimmed back to normal.

“Do try not to let any of your enemies assassinate you on the way out of the building,” she said, tucking the blades into her belt. “A full-scale Jedi investigation would force me to relocate.”

“I’d definitely lose sleep over that,” he said, already at the door.

He scooped Ahsoka out into the creepy hallway, wishing he could weld Ventress’ door shut behind him.

“Thank the stars _that’s_ over,” he muttered, steering Ahsoka toward the elevator. He wanted _out_ of this freaky place. “What made you go after _Ventress_?”

“She could help us with Dooku!” Ahsoka said, radiating disappointment and a clear desire to kick the wall, and probably Ventress’ shins too. “I know she could!”

“If she was a completely different person, maybe.”

“Skyguy!”

“Look. She wants to be left alone.” He blew out a hard breath. “But she also wants to make Dooku pay.”

Ahsoka eyed him sideways. Unfortunately, punching the _down_ button on the elevator didn’t even require him to fake concentration.

“If that last one wins out,” he said, “she’ll come find us again. And I think she will.”

 _If Barriss had got away, I’d have gone after her._ To the ends of the galaxy, he’d have hunted her down.

And he knew that in that way, Ventress was like him. When people betrayed you, you couldn’t just let them walk away.

He remembered the way blood in the night had smelled on Tatooine, and his hand curled into a fist on his arm.

“So we’ll give her a little while,” he said, trying to unclench his hand. “In the meantime, we’ll figure out where to go next.”

The elevator arrived with almost no sound, only the whir of the machinery and gentle clunk of the doors sliding into place. He and Ahsoka stepped on board, and he tapped the button for the ground floor.

“All right,” Ahsoka sighed as the doors began to shut. “I just -- what are we going to do now?”

He didn’t get a chance to reply. A pale hand darted through the closing gap and clamped onto the edge of the door. The arm was next, shoving the doors apart.

He and Ahsoka stared at Ventress as she stood in the open elevator, glaring at them like she wanted to fuse their spines to the wall behind them.

“You two idiots are going to get yourselves killed,” she growled. “I couldn’t _think_ why this would bother me. I still can’t, if we’re being candid. Get out of there.” She jerked her chin over her shoulder. “I can tell the two of you wouldn’t know planning if it shot you in the head.”

“Well, yeah,” said Anakin, “we’d be dead, then.”

Ventress had a withering glare, but it was nothing on Obi-Wan’s. “Control him, _little Soka_.”

As she strode away, Anakin raised his eyebrows at Ahsoka, who grimaced.

“Don’t say it,” she muttered. _I don’t want her to know it bothers me,_ he understood her to mean.

“Just remember,” he said, clapping her on the shoulder, “this was your idea, Snips.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so when i started this fic i'd set out to write a fix-it to the end of tcw which vaguely included action and adventure and all that fun stuff, but instead i just keep writing these emotionally charged conversations that are k i l l i n g meeeee why am i like this 
> 
> but thank you all so much for your comments! (Ｔ▽Ｔ) i'll try to answer them all; i just.... am lousy with keeping up with that sort of thing :x


	6. Going Rogue

As soon as the door closed behind Obi-Wan, Padme wanted to call him boack. The haughty, fortifying anger collapsed ( _you always lose your temper like a queen_ , her mother used to say) and suddenly she only felt --

She turned at the soft scuff of a footstep and found Bail, pale and rueful, standing just inside the room.

“Padme. . .”

“We can’t go through with it.”

It hadn’t been what she meant to say -- but with it out, she felt both better and worse.

Bail shook his head and slumped against the arm of the couch, his forehead in his hand, as she sank down next to him, her heart feeling wrung like a washcloth.

“I thought,” his voice was muffled by his hand, “that if it were the right thing to do, it wouldn’t -- matter that they would. . . withdraw their friendship, likely forever. That they wouldn’t trust us anymore, and would feel--”

“Betrayed.”

She remembered the way Ahsoka had felt in her arms, that lost expression on her face; Anakin’s fury and his helplessness; Obi-Wan so distant and so blank. . .

The last two years felt as if they’d lasted two hundred.

“What’s happened, Bail? To all of us?”

“War,” he said heavily. “It’s destroying us all.”

“How can we _stop_ it?” Frustration crackled through her in a nervous, electrifying energy. “Everything we’ve tried, over and over--” She stood, needing to move, to do something --

“But we can’t move against the Jedi, just to be doing something,” he said, as if he’d read her mind.

“No.”

Was that what she’d done? She didn’t know. She’d been aware of the sliding public opinion, even before Ahsoka’s trial -- she knew the Jedi had so much to contend with, more than they could be expected to handle; it was stretching them beyond their endurance, weakening them. . . she saw it not just in Anakin. Obi-Wan had radiated exhaustion as he’d stood staring at Bail’s decor with an empty helplessness that had troubled her. Their quarrel had been the only time he’d tuned in fully.

_It’s all gone so wrong,_ she thought. The Order casting out Ahsoka, Anakin not knowing whether to stay or go, herself fighting with Obi-Wan--

_This war has turned us all against each other -- the Jedi, the Senate, the Republic, our allies, our friends, our families--_

“I have to tell him I’m sorry,” she said, groping through her pockets for her communicator. “Even if he doesn’t want to talk to me.”

Sure enough, Obi-Wan’s communicator simply beeped out. She left a message anyway.

“Obi-Wan, forget everything I said. Bail and I agree that --” She gripped the metal strip until her fingertips ached. “The Jedi’s friendship, _your_ friendship, is very important to me. In these times, it’s more important than anything else. I’m sorry I -- almost forgot that.”

She cut the call and looked to Bail, who gave her a sad, tired smile.

“I feel better already,” he said with some dryness.

“The first time I met Obi-Wan, my palace had been captured by the Trade Federation.” She watched the rain stream down the windows, Bail’s rooftop garden a dark blur past the wavering glass. “I didn’t want to leave my people to deal with them alone. . . but everyone said I should, to escape and fight them another day, when we were stronger. From the moment I agreed, it felt terribly wrong. It didn’t feel right again until I was back at home, on Naboo, with them.”

“That was a difficult time,” Bail said quietly. “The Senate voting against aid. . . the deposing of Chancellor Valorum. . .”

“I cast that vote,” she said. “On Palpatine’s advice. He said that Valorum wouldn’t move, and he was right. The Jedi wouldn’t send more aid, besides the two who’d already gone to it. In the end, leaving Naboo didn’t matter. I feel like that again.”

She and Bail sat listening to the rain and the din of their own thoughts.

“At Ahsoka’s trial, when Barriss confessed,” Padme said quietly, “she claimed she’d acted because the Jedi Order was responsible for the war.”

“That is foolish,” Bail said, though he sounded troubled. “The Jedi have been -- requisitioned, but it is the Senate that continues to control them.”

“Yes, and _that_ is the problem. I thought, if the Senate could be swayed to pull them back, to stop using them”-- _stop sending them off to die_ \--“they might seek a diplomatic solution, but. . .”

“The problem that I see,” Bail said slowly, “is that the Jedi have come increasingly under Senate control. That’s what this trial showed us, didn’t it? They are now so bound by the Senate’s rule that they act against their own judgment. Obi-Wan would never have agreed--” He broke off, taking in a breath. “The war has made them into a -- purely political entity.”

“And however we go about it, that _has_ to stop.”

Padme knew about corruption in the Republic -- she was a senator, and she saw it every day; struggled to navigate it and preserve the spirit of their democracy, even if, or especially because, she felt so assailed by the greed and indifference and self-serving blindness around her. But she would _always_ fight for the Republic -- and the Jedi were a part of it.

She had thought to save the Jedi by playing off the Senate’s self-interest. But that, she now saw, was a plan made in error, from a place of anger, pain and fear. Ahsoka walking away from all her friends, Anakin at war within himself, Obi-Wan exhausted with grief -- they were all unmoored, breaking apart.

They could not win if they were not united.

“We need to contact everyone who’s our ally, still,” she said. “And get them over here. We need a working plan.”

_We have to save the Jedi before there’s nothing left to save._

* * *

Ahsoka had spent far too much time lately in rooms without windows. She was having trouble remembering the exact last time she’d seen sunlight. . .

No; she did: as she’d walked away from the Temple, the watery sunlight leeching all color out of the sky, stretching the shadows deep. She’d left Anakin standing half in shadow, half in that blinding light.

Now, Anakin kept pacing. It was making her antsy.

She tried releasing her frustration into the Force, even if it felt like scooping handfuls of water out of a sinking boat. Anakin and Ventress were bad enough together without _her_ adding to it herself.

“A holochron?” she repeated.

“Like hell we’re going to give you a _Jedi holochron_ ,” Anakin said, glowering darkly at Ventress.

“I’m not after precious Jedi secrets, Skywalker,” she said, his name sounding a lot like ‘nerf-brain’ in that tone. “It can be a laundry list for Poggle the Lesser for all I care, it just needs to be a Jedi holochron.”

“Why?” Ahsoka asked before Anakin could start, or rather continue, the quarrel. He’d stopped next to her couch, which was helpful: she could step on his foot.

“Combining the Light and Dark side yields great power,” Ventress said, “greater than can be achieved by either side alone.”

“That’s impossible,” Anakin scoffed. (He also shuffled aside and rubbed at his foot with the opposite sole.)

“Really,” Ventress said to Ahsoka, “how could the Jedi expect you to learn from this cretin?”

“All right,” Ahsoka said, holding up her hands. “I’m calling for an insults embargo -- no more digs until we’ve got a _working plan_. And while I’m at it.” She pointed at them, as Anakin started to protest and Ventress snorted. “We each get to lay out our ideas _in full_ before someone starts in on them. It’s Ventress’ turn, so we need to hear the whole thing _before_ judging it.”

“Cold-blooded mutiny,” Anakin muttered. “Fine, Snips. Explain these great Sith secrets, then,” he added to Ventress with a heavy helping of sarcasm. “And why the Sith hate the Jedi so much if they’re the key to unlimited power.”

“Look no further than the mirror for how impossibly annoying the Jedi are,” Ventress said.

Ahsoka wanted to groan. “ _What_ did I just say?”

Ventress rolled her eyes. “Fine, little _Soka_. But really, how likely is it that Jedi and Sith would join forces? A Sith is hardly eager to ask for a Jedi’s help and the Jedi are equally far from giving it. If the Jedi has to be coerced, they’re going to prove an untenable ally.”

“Most Jedi would rather die,” Anakin said, sounding, for once in the conversation, subdued.

Ahsoka sent him a wave of comfort, which he returned with a delicacy like Artoo might have handled an eggshell.

“The Dark Side and the Light.” For a moment, Ventress’ vitriol abated. “Together they _are_ the Force. That’s what the heretics say, anyway.”

Ahsoka wavered between amusement and curiosity. “There are Sith heretics?”

“There are always blasphemers, if you look deep enough.”

“And they thought working with Jedi was a good idea?” Anakin sounded skeptical; Ahsoka couldn’t blame him.

“I can _hardly_ credit it myself,” Ventress said.

“Don’t suppose they found many takers,” Anakin said.

“ _We’re_ all here,” Ahsoka pointed out, before he and Ventress could return to name-calling. “We can’t have been the only ones in a few thousand years who needed to work together.”

Anakin and Ventress’ expressions said that while that may have been true, none of those other Sith or Jedi could possibly have suffered as much as they were suffering right now.

“Do you have a Sith holochron just hanging around here, then?” Anakin asked. “Maybe as a paperweight?”

“Hardly. But lucky for us all, I know where one can be found.”

“I can’t believe how lucky that makes me feel, all right,” he muttered.

“Okay,” Ahsoka said, giving him a poke in the Force, “for arguments’ sake, let’s say we get these holochrons. What are we supposed to do with them?”

“Apparently we can combine their powers to get answers we need,” Ventress said, running her finger along the back of one of her saber hilts; she kept touching them, as if reassuring herself she had them again. “I assume we’ll be asking them for a way to defeat Dooku.

“So, that’s _my_ plan,” she said, folding her arms and leaning back in her seat. “What do _you_ two have to offer in response?”

They didn’t have anything; that’s why Ahsoka had gone to Ventress in the first place. She and Anakin nudged each other in the Force.

“Ahsoka and I need to -- talk first,” he said, pretending, and not very well even to Ahsoka’s eye, that they needed to discuss a plan they didn’t have.

Ventress’ expression was witheringly unimpressed. “Fine. Go in there to do it.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder at a closed door. “I’m going to order something to eat. If you want anything, fork over some credits.”

Ahsoka tossed her Padme’s on-loan credit chip. “Try not to buy the whole restaurant.”

She and Anakin closed themselves into a room with a really enormous bed. There were mirrors on the ceiling and all over the walls. They both gave the decor a wary look. Especially what looked like rings on the headboard.

“I really don’t want to know,” Ahsoka muttered, though she thought she had a pretty good idea. Living on Coruscant, you couldn’t avoid picking things up.

“I bet she isn’t even paying for any of this,” Anakin said, staring at the bed with a vaguely unsettled feeling leaking through his shields. “‘Fork over credits’ my--”

“Aren’t we supposed to be discussing a plan?” Ahsoka said. “Pretending we’ve got one?”

“Right.” He snapped his gaze away from the headboard rings. “I’ve got a better idea--”

His communicator beeped as he reached for it.

“Speak of the krayt,” he said, tapping the call open.

Obi-Wan’s holo-image sprang into the air between them.

* * *

The Temple was -- too quiet. Always a wellspring of serenity, of peace built over a thousand years, its silence now felt. . . like a tomb.

Unease prickled the back of Obi-Wan’s neck. He almost turned so many times to look over his shoulder, unable to shake the phantom sensation of being followed, even though he knew there was nothing there.

The emptiness of his quarters, usually soothing -- especially when the alternative was Anakin _welding_ \-- made him want to go from room to room, checking for something that shouldn’t be there.

But it was only his imagination.

He settled on his mat and tried meditating, but every attempt slipped away from him. He kept thinking, _Anakin, did you know what she was planning?_

He was failing everything these days, it felt like. Failing to protect Satine, Ahsoka -- failing Anakin -- the galaxy -- now failing at the simplest task of a Jedi.

_It’s no wonder at all the rest, if you fail at the start_.

He tried to let the thought go. That was the point: to _let go_.

The weight of everything he could not let go of dragged at him.

Well, he knew at least one Jedi who’d be disinclined to take him to task over that.

There was a message on his holocomm; the identification stamp read as Padme’s. Not in the mood to listen to her, he skipped over it and dialed Anakin’s frequency.

He wasn’t expecting Ahsoka’s image to spring up, too, which had been rather myopic of him. Surprise and pain flickered over her face as the holo stabilized. He wondered what his own expression had done.

“ _I was just gonna call you,_ ” Anakin said, satisfaction curling his voice.

Obi-Wan remembered his sheepish look in the hangar, the way he’d wriggled his bare toes, and wanted to say, _Come back._

But Anakin had to work through this on his own. It was what Obi-Wan had always tried to teach him.

Anakin had to make his own decision.

“Dare I ask? Hello, Ahsoka.”

“ _Hi, Master,_ ” she said. Anakin had called the title habit; Obi-Wan’s heart ached.

_I am so sorry, my dear, how are you_

“Well, the both of you appear to have all your limbs attached,” he said, scrutinizing them. Anakin still had that bruise, but that was the worst of the lot. . . on the surface, at least. The difference lay beneath. Ahsoka looked less cheerful, less collected than normal; a lot like she’d done after she had come back from the Trandoshans’ moon.

“ _My_ patience _is gonna kick it soon, though,_ ” Anakin said.

“Ventress?”

“ _She’s agreed to help,_ ” Ahsoka said.

Obi-Wan was impressed in spite of himself. “And how did you manage that?”

“ _We appealed to her desire for revenge,_ ” Anakin said, rather casually. Ahsoka gave him a sideways look that he either didn’t notice or pretended not to see.

“That might do it,” Obi-Wan said slowly. “You know I have to ask -- are you sure you can trust her?”

The question was for both of them, but it was Anakin who snorted. “ _No. We’re gonna give this a try, though. We, uh. Need something, though._ ”

“Something besides her lightsabers?” Obi-Wan asked dryly as Anakin looked shifty and Ahsoka tried not to.

“ _Yeah. Um. Have you ever heard of. . . combining Jedi and Sith stuff? Like artifacts._ ”

“In very old documents. The results are -- erratic at best. What are you planning?”

Anakin and Ahsoka traded a look. Deciding how much to tell him, Obi-Wan knew. He wanted suddenly, desperately, to be with them.

The thought clung as he tried to let it go.

“Anakin,” he said in a way that usually got results, even if it was only defensive bridling.

“ _Ventress says if we combine the two holochrons, we can get answers,_ ” Anakin said, and yes; there was that defensive line.

“Two -- a Jedi and a _Sith_ _holochron_.” This was definitely a headache building. “I can guess where you intend to get the first one, but _where_ are you going to find the second?”

“ _Ventress says she knows a place_ ,” Anakin said, making an attempt at sounding as if this was nothing to worry about.

“How relieving. I’ll just check one out for you, shall I? Ventress is an ally now, I’m sure this can only end well.”

Anakin’s chin angled up, haughty, accusing. “ _If you won’t help, you can just say so.”_

“Oh, I’m always happy to help former Sith acolytes. When our friends have become our enemies, it only makes sense that our enemies should become our friends.”

“I’m _not your enemy_ ,” Anakin said, his chin dropping, his flickering holo-image flashing with affronted injury, and Obi-Wan hadn’t even brought up Padme yet.

He both dreaded and longed to fight with Anakin -- and just the realization made him pull away from the feeling, from that dark, electric prickling, and _release, release, release_

_There is no emotion; there is peace_

“ _Maybe Anakin can do some research, see if there’s any truth to what she’s saying?_ ” Ahsoka said; bless her for interrupting.

“Yes,” Obi-Wan said, gripping at his control, “that is a possibility. The Council still wishes to talk to us, Anakin.”

Anakin’s blue image look confused, as if he’d completely forgotten that the Council existed. But then the flicker hardened as he presumably remembered in detail.

“I _don’t want to talk to_ them _,_ ” he snapped.

“Unless you’re going rogue, you _are_ still beholden to their commands.”

And there it was. An impulse to let that end it and cut the call flashed through him, but he rejected it. He watched Anakin -- he would not look away; would not be at the mercy of his fear, even if his heart wanted to pound.

_There is no passion, there is serenity_

“ _I. . ._ ” Anakin was the one who looked away, while Ahsoka watched him. He turned his head and met her gaze. Obi-Wan couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

“ _I’ll be there,_ ” Anakin said, and cut the call.

At the last moment before she vanished, Ahsoka had looked up at Obi-Wan.

In the towering silence of his quarters, he sat with his fist pressed against one side of his mouth, staring at the silent comm where the two of them had stood.

* * *

 

Anakin didn’t like leaving Ahsoka with Ventress. Well, he didn’t like leaving her at all, but the last time he had, she’d gone and found _Ventress_ and that’s why they were in this situation. Who knew what she’d get up to _this_ time?

“It’ll be fine,” Ahsoka said, sitting on one side of a table laden with an obscene amount of food. She handed him a nerf-burger overflowing with spicy fish sauce; his mouth watered painfully. “After we eat all this, we’re not going to be able to move.”

“I made my daily bounty,” Ventress said from the other side of the feast she’d ordered. It was almost as much food as Padme would have set out, only heavier on the grease and fried, crunchy bits. “I’m owed a bit of rest before I go gallivanting off with you two.”

“Don’t do anything Artoo wouldn’t do,” he said to Ahsoka, which was code for _I’m sending Artoo along_.

His last sight as the door swished shut behind him was Ahsoka’s salute.

He hadn’t taken a speeder down to meet Ahsoka, only hopped a train; he headed back for the Temple the same way, horking down his sandwich as he passed through the dirty cars. He needed to move in a way that even flying couldn’t solve.

The sight of the Temple, its spires stretching into the rain-dark sky, was both soothing and gut-clenching.

_Unless you’re going rogue_ , Obi-Wan had said.

He was going with Ahsoka. He was telling the Council that. They were going to find Dooku and stop the war.

If the Council didn’t like that, they’d _have_ their answer.

The guards didn’t stop him as he passed through the front entrance. Of course they didn’t; stupid thought. He just. . . felt out of place. The whole _Temple_ felt out of synch. Like there was something wrong in the air.

_So there_ is _emotion,_ he thought. _There_ isn’t _serenity_.

He rode the lift up to the Council chambers, clenching and unclenching his mechanized hand. His heart beat faster the higher the car climbed.

_I belong with Ahsoka_ , he thought. _No matter what they try to tell me--_

He’d known his mom was in trouble, and he’d let the Jedi convince him that it was all in his head.

They’d tried to make him think Ahsoka wasn’t innocent, that she wasn’t to be fought for.

Both times, they’d been _wrong_.

The lift opened. When there was sunlight, the Council chambers’ floors gleamed. Now, with the sky storming, they were dull and colorless.

Obi-Wan stood with his back to the lift, staring out the window at the looping stream of speeder-traffic. He turned as Anakin stepped out, his face far more tired than the holocomm had accounted for.

_You should be with me and Ahsoka_ , Anakin thought, something painful seizing his throat.

But Obi-Wan wouldn’t go. He was the Jedi everyone aspired to be -- the Jedi the Order was _meant_ to be.

Anakin remembered Ahsoka closing his own hand over her padawan braid. Even the memory made his heart shiver with pain. He couldn’t -- _couldn’t_ \-- bear it if Obi-Wan rejected him like that.

Obi-Wan wouldn’t leave, ever.

“Anakin. . .”

He looked up. Obi-Wan’s eyes, his pupils large in the stormlight, were searching his face.

“. . . you have sauce on your chin,” he said.

Feeling childish -- but also, somehow, almost wanting to smile -- Anakin reached up to scrub at his face.

“Other side,” Obi-Wan said.

“Thanks,” Anakin muttered. It’d be hard to make his big gesture at the Council with orange fish sauce on his chin.

He could’ve sworn Obi-Wan smiled, but it was so small that the beard hid it -- and Anakin thought he was trying to hide it anyway. Obi-Wan was usually pretty closed off, except when he wanted to project tranquility or in the middle of a fight when he shone like a driving blade; now, it was like putting your hand on transparisteel and trying to feel the rain falling on the other side.

“How is Ahsoka?” Obi-Wan asked; and there was a vibration in the Force, like thunder rattling the pane.

“I think Ventress kind of likes her. I’m the only one she’s been insulting -- well. Mostly.”

“Anakin. . .” Obi-Wan moved a step closer to him, almost like he hadn’t meant to. His arms were crossed across the chest; everything about him was reigned in, inside and out. Part of Anakin wanted to touch him, just to see what he would do.

“You _do_ have a plan,” Obi-Wan said, his eyes hard to read. “Please tell me you’re not simply going to grab a pair of holochrons and bang them together hoping something will happen.”

Since this was pretty much exactly the plan, Anakin asked irritably, “Do you want me to lie to you, then?”

Obi-Wan closed his eyes a second longer than a blink. “Anakin--”

“I didn’t _plan_ on Ahsoka getting kicked out of the Order as a traitor, either. I’ve had to _adapt_.”

Something flickered in Obi-Wan’s eyes, almost whispered in the Force, and suddenly the anger burning inside Anakin’s chest stung himself, too. This wasn’t what he wanted to be talking about. If Obi-Wan wouldn’t come with them, he could at least tell them what they should do. That’s what Anakin _wanted_ , Obi-Wan telling him what was the best way. Anakin might have to _update_ what he said, but that was the _right way_ to do things.

He was never supposed to do this on his own.

He heard the chamber doors whisper open behind him, felt -- and saw -- Obi-Wan’s attention divide from him.

“It’s time, then,” Obi-Wan said, and there was a weight in his voice that Anakin didn’t think meant only walking into the room.

His heartbeat jumped in his chest as he followed Obi-Wan inside. He knew what would happen: Obi-Wan would go and take his seat, leaving Anakin standing alone, all the Council staring at him, judging him -- the Council who’d never trusted him, who hadn’t trusted Ahsoka when it really mattered--

But Obi-Wan didn’t sit among the Councilors.

He stood next to Anakin in the center of the floor.

Anakin was confused and his heart beat harder, until he remembered that Obi-Wan had said that the Council wanted to talk to them both.

(As if they had the right to ask _anything_ of him after what they’d)

“Kenobi. Skywalker. We have a mission for you,” Master Windu said, watching them. The whole Council was watching. Anakin couldn’t read them at all. Yoda was staring at a point between his feet, as if deep in thought. Master Plo’s claws were linked in front of him, and for a moment, Anakin caught a wave of grief.

His determination, wavering with doubt and something that whispered dangerously of longing, calcified.

“With all due respect”--he heard anger flare in his voice--“Masters, I have my own mission to complete.”

Yoda looked up, but showed no other reaction. Windu just transferred his attention to Anakin wholly; the latticed eye-holes of Plo’s mask tilted Anakin’s way. Obi-Wan barely shifted, no more than if he’d released a breath he’d been holding.

“Your own mission, you say,” Windu said, not sounding terribly surprised, but cautious. “And this mission is?”

The fingers of Anakin’s left hand dug into his palm. “Ahsoka and I are going to hunt down Dooku and stop him ourselves.”

The Council just kept on watching him. Only Plo moved, lowering his hands to his lap. A few gazes switched to Obi-Wan, but then back to Anakin.

Who felt suddenly like he’d missed something.

“To do this,” Yoda said, “how do you plan?”

“We’ve -- got Ventress,” Anakin said guardedly. He glanced sideways at Obi-Wan, whose eyebrows were slightly drawn together as he stared forward.

Windu and Yoda traded a long, unspeaking look. The rest of the Council looked to them, waiting. Anakin was now thoroughly confused.

Obi-Wan was motionless next to him.

“This mission, we had planned,” said Yoda. When Anakin’s mouth fell open, he added, “Given to Quinlan Vos, it was to be.”

“He was to make contact with the assassin, Asajj Ventress, and through her learn how Dooku might be killed,” Windu said.

Anakin shut his mouth, opened it again, and had no idea what to say.

“Make contact already, you have?” Yoda asked, the focus of his gaze an almost physical weight.

“I -- just came from talking to her.” Anakin wanted to knock the side of his head to be sure he was hearing all of this correctly. “She, uh. Has an idea. On how to stop him.”

Through the Force he felt something from Obi-Wan: almost like a -- groan.

Windu’s eyes flicked to Obi-Wan for just a second. “And that is?”

“Uh. We need -- a holochron.”

“Why?” asked Windu with a surprising lack of disbelief.

“If we combine a Jedi and a Sith holochron, we can -- get answers.”

Anakin was now really wishing he’d hashed this out more before coming here. He never thought they’d hear him out, and the plan was sounding more like throwing up his hands and saying “ _hell if I know_ ” each time he said it out loud.

And from Obi-Wan he was getting the sense of wanting to bury his face in his hand. Anakin poked at him in the Force: _not helping_.

Windu and Yoda traded another look.

“Thoughts from the Council,” Windu said.

“We had already discussed sending Quinlan Vos,” Ki Adi Mundi said, “to learn from the assassin a way to defeat Count Dooku. It was never outside of probability that she would counsel him in the use of the Dark Side -- that is, after all, her specialty. This request seems no different from a step we’d already decided it was worth taking.”

Anakin clenched his jaw to stop his mouth from falling open again. Obi-Wan abruptly shut off next to him; though they still stood together, Anakin felt suddenly lonely.

“If Skywalker and Ahsoka have already made contact with her,” Plo said, his voice even slower than it normally was, “then they are far ahead of our proposed schedule.”

“Then we’re in agreement,” said Windu, “to transfer the mission to Skywalker?”

Almost everyone was nodding (not Obi-Wan; he was stone-still). Anakin almost reeled.

“Wait,” he said, “ _what_?”

“The mission to work with the assassin Asajj Ventress to stop Count Dooku, we transfer to you,” Windu said, his full attention on Anakin, along with everyone else’s, a pressure in the Force like being suspended deep in water. “To stop Dooku -- by whatever means necessary.”

Anakin stared at him, his heartbeat solid in his ears.

“Understood,” he said.

“A holochron, you shall have,” Yoda said. “One with knowledge the Sith cannot exploit, we shall find.”

“Right,” Anakin said, feeling dizzy, dimly sensing this was not the appropriate response but not caring.

“When the mission is done,” said Windu, “if you and Tano wish to return, you will be welcomed.”

Anakin couldn’t say anything. He wondered if he should be angry but had no idea. All he could do was nod.

“Grows short, the time,” said Yoda. “Go with due haste, Skywalker, you must. Swift preparations to make.”

He gestured at Windu, who stood. Anakin realized he was supposed to follow him out, probably to get the holochron and anything else they were going to give him.

To leave Obi-Wan, who would stay to hear his own mission. Anakin was going to stop Dooku -- not Anakin-and-Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan met his eye. His hands were folded tightly across his arms. He did not nod, or smile, or frown; nothing from him -- but something reached for Anakin in the Force, like the ocean meeting the shore, and in that moment, he wanted only to stay there and _be_ with it.

But then Obi-Wan dipped his head in farewell, and Windu was at the chamber door, and it was time to go.

Anakin turned and walked away, and wondered if this was how Ahsoka had felt as she’d left them all behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm updating this from my phone at work, so if something gets messed up, let's blame that!
> 
> thank you!!! to all readers, a special thanks to kudosers, and an extra special thanks to commenters ♥


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